Intermitent Copy and Paste problems using VMWare Tools for Windows under ESX 3.5

[dvdchas]

We are finding that copying and pasting between our vmware virtual machines and the physical guest machines is very unreliable.

We are using VMWare ESX Server 3.5.0, 110268. We have the same version of VMWare tools installed on our virtualised Win Xp SP3 machines. And are remotely controlling the virtual machines from Windows XP machines running "VMWare Infrastructure Client Version 2.5.0 Build 104215". We open consoles in the own windows (e.g. right click open console from the inventory tree view)

We've recorded the following behaviour:

On a freshly booted VM Workstation and desktop physical copy and paste between virtual environments and desktops works as expected.

Over time this feature degrades as follows:-

1) Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V fails using right click 'copy' instead is more reliable. (1 only)

2) Copy and Paste between "Open Console" style windows fails. Resulting in an old value being pasted. (1 and 2)

3) Copy and Paste between the console tab in the main Vmware Infrastructure client fails. Resulting in an old value being pasted (1,2 and 3)

4) Restarting the Virtual Environment, will often resolve the above issues

5) As a final resort restarting the desktop machine as well will resolve issues.

Do VMWare recognise this problem? Are we running the latest version of the tools?

Is this fixed / enhanced with a later version of VMWare? Are there other workarounds?

I have been trawling around looking for answers but not found anything definiative)

Thanks

Sorry of this is the wrong area

Rob

[dvdchas]

Sorry to reply to my own thread.

We do have situations where two different pc's will connect to the same virtual machine. That is you see the little yellow warning at the top saying:-

"Number of active connections has changed. There are now 2 active connections"

I've been told that this issue surrounds how the client picks up the local clipboard of the person who is consoled onto a given VM via the VIC (VMWare Infrastucture Client). When multiple people are consoled onto a given VM the client cache can get overwritten by other peoples clipboard.

This sounds very plausable to me. If the VIC Console provided some sort of mechanism to list the clients (machine and username) that are currently connected. It could then provide a mechanism for forcibly disconnecting the other clients. Or setting which client currently controls the copy/paste buffer, rather than lots of clients fighting for the same copy/paste buffer.

Some kind of 'Reset copy paste buffer' menu option which re-established that client machine as the master would be really useful.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, Virtualization Practice Analyst[/url]
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