Can't Drag & Drop From Workstation Sometimes - why?

[WhiteKnight]

Sometimes I can't drag some files out of a VM (Windows 7) into my host (Windows 7)... The mouse cursor keeps caught in the boundaries of the Workstation window...

Why does it do that?

[WhiteKnight]

This still happens... Is there no one who can reproduce this? Or tell me how to get rid of this faulty behaviour?

[WhiteKnight]

I believe I can narrow the situation when this happens:

Execute Workstation in Windowed mode and scroll to the rightmost and bottommost edges of the VM screen like this (notice the VM window scroll bars):

Now try to drag some icon from the VM desktop to the host desktop. This won't work.

I guess this only happens when the VM viewport is not positioned at x=0, y=0.

Perhaps this will help the VMware team to fix this issue.

[a_p_]

To be able to use drag & drop, you need to have VMware tools installed in the guest.

André

[WhiteKnight]

Of course. I do have them installed.

Did you try to reproduce the situation?

[a_p_]

Two other thing you can check:

- Display settings: change the color depth in the guest

- make sure the VMware user agent is running (see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1014988)

André

[WhiteKnight]

Everything is running fine on my machines. I'm running Workstation on several hosts. They all show the same behaviour.

I'm not striving to get a salvation for my machines, I'm reporting a bug here.

Did you try to reproduce this issue?

[a_p_]

Did you try to reproduce this issue?

You are right, I should have done this earlier. It's the same behavior here with an XP host and WS 7.0.

You should probably post this in "Product & Feature Suggestions". IMO the chance that someone from VMware will read this is higher, than in the "VMware Workstation" forum.

I'm sure one of the moderators will be glad to move this thread, if you ask them to do so.

André

[WoodyZ]

Of course. I do have them installed.

From the image you posted, (I'd like to see the other half too), I can see why one would question whether or not you have VMware Tools installed because the default is to show the VMware Tools icon in the System Notification Area (also referred to the System Tray) and it is not present in the image you posted and I'd guess the majority of uses don't disable it so I too would have assumed VMware Tools were not installed based on the image posted.

[WhiteKnight]

Hi André,

thanks for trying to reproduce this issue. It's good to know that I'm not the only one facing this behaviour.

I'd be very glad to ask the forum moderator to shift this thread from this forum to the "Product & Feature Suggestions" forum so someone of the VMware team can have an eye on this. Do you perhaps know what I'd need to do to ask for this?

Hi, WoodyZ,

aha, I see now... Yes, you are right... I have disabled the Workstation Tools icon because it does not provide any runtime information. (I personally think Workstation Tools should not install a tray icon at all then.)

And, just for those interested to see the full picture of this issue, see here[/url]

[continuum]

You should probably post this in "Product & Feature Suggestions". IMO the chance that someone from VMware will read this is higher, than in the "VMware Workstation" forum.

Hi Andre - I am not so sure that the Product and Feature Suggestions section is visited by VMware employees - anyway - if Whiteknight wants to move the post I will move it.

I'd rather suggest to create a new post there and summarize the issue a bit




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[WhiteKnight]

Hi continuum,

thanks for pointing the way!

OK then, so I'll repost this thread to the other forum after rewriting it a bit.

Thanks to you all!

Axel Dahmen

[richardoz]

I know this is an older thread, but I am having the same problems with Windows 7 64bit professional host and a Windows 7 32bit Guest with the latest tools installed using workstation 8.02.

Anyone have any suggestions where I can look for anothe thread with some ideas how to work around it?

It's odd that I can drag items in/on to the VM , but drag out or copy paste doesnt work.  If I reboot workstation and start up the guest os, it works for a while, then it just quits some time later.

Any ideas/suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks

R.Oz

[WhiteKnight]

Hi Richard,

this was a problem of Workstation version 7. If you're using Workstation 8 running a Workstation 8 compatible VM, this won't occur again.

BTW: Windows 7 has a bug in the Drag & Drop feature, too. Sometimes Drag & Drop doesn't work there properly, either. But in the thread I've been linking to in my previous sentence there's a remedy for the bug.

HTH,

Axel

[richardoz]

Thanks for the advice.  I'll try the Windows 7 Drag & Drop the next time it comes up.

R.Oz

[VMWuser22]

I resolved this problem by reducing the number of processor cores to something less than the host computer.

My host computer is using an i7 with 8 cores.   So I was using my virtual machines with 8 cores when running them in Workstation 9.  I eventually tested the problem machine on Player which required me to reduce the number of cores to 4 and had no problem.  I went back to Workstation 9 and it continued to work (cores set to 4).  BUT then I moved the setting back up to 8, the problem started to occur.  I changed the number of cores to 6, only because there is not a 7, and I haven’t experienced the problem since.

Apparently by running the guest with the same number of cores as the host, a resource issue is occurring and the host cannot accommodate the processing needed by the guest.

[WhiteKnight]

Interesting observation!

I must say that this problem did not occur to me anymore since Workstation 9. But my VMs are always running with just one single core only, so that I can have multiple VMs running simultaneously without too much performance loss for arbitration (which I hope Workstation is performing wisely).

So your observation might still be a valid one.

[daehl]

I have the problem where I cannot drag & drop files from my Host OS into the Client OS within Workstation 9.0.2, BUT I can drag & drop files the other way around (from my Client OS to my Host OS). I know that this problem is not specific to my VM, because I have copied this exact same VM to another PC running VMware Player 5.0.2 and the drag & drop works both ways. So what could be interfering with drag & drop in only a single direction?

Both computers I've tested this on are virtually identical:

Dell Latitude 5520 running Windows 7 (x64) with all updates applied.

Both have 8GB RAM, The only obvious difference is one is running Workstation 9.0.2 the other is running Player 5.0.2.

The VM in question is a Windows XP (x86) install, configured to use 2GB RAM and 2 cores of 1 cpu.

I have the most current version of VMware Tools installed on both. I have reinstalled them multiple times and tried repairing my VMware Workstation install many times all to no avail.

Certainly there are some differences in the installed applications on these two laptops, but not much. But is there any log or way to troubleshoot why I can't drag & drop into this VM from one configuration and not the other?

[rsmerker]

I am not sure if this is your problem, and I hesitate to even mention it because it sounds so ridiculous (But it worked!) I had the same problem for months with dozens of VM's, and no solution worked.  I could usually drag in, but never out.  I finally found a lone post on a guys blog who stated to shut down the vm, remove the floppy device from the VM config, then start back up.   Voila!  It worked like a champ.  I was immediately able to drag and drop as well as cut and paste both directions - I thought it was a crazy fix but it worked on all of our VM's.

Most of our VM's had a floppy by default from the setup wizard, but none of our hosts actually have physical drives.  I suspect that it has something to do with the VMWare Tools Agent spending time trying to locate and/or validate the drive on startup (Even though we didnt have them checked to connect right away), and in turn it drops the ball on initializing the IPC for host-guest.

[urbanman2004]

Thanks. Had this same problem and your solution worked