Clipboard eventually stops working

[xgecko]

I have noticed that the Clipboard stops taking data from the Host after some time necessitating a complete reboot of guest and host. This is of course quite annoying.

I am using WS 7.1. Please investigate this.

Guest is XP in the cases I have seen, Host is Win 7 x64.

[xgecko]

Hello? Anyone out there? Tech support has directed me to use the forum to resolve issues yet nothing seems to happen; if you are going to charge for incident support after 30 days and claim the forum is the proper channel then it seems to me you need to do a better job of monitoring the forum.

This problem is extremely disruptive as once the clipboard communication dies I have to reboot everything to get it back. Please advise.

[Felix-The-Cat]

>Please investigate this.

Hello xgecko,

To be able to investigate, we need more info:

1.Host hardware/software parameters.

2.Logs: UI (Help-About-UI Log File) and .vmx (VM folder, look for vmware.log).

********************

Cheers

[xgecko]

Not sure what you mean by Host hw/sw parameters. I can offer that I have 6 GB RAM with 1.5GB assigned to the Guest. Not sure what else might matter, so be specific.

I attached the vmware.log you requested but have no idea what the other one is... oops! I think I just figured out what you meant in your message so I did find and attach the UI log.

Hope that is what you were looking for.

[Scissor]

Hello? Anyone out there? Tech support has directed me to use the forum to resolve issues yet nothing seems to happen; if you are going to charge for incident support after 30 days and claim the forum is the proper channel then it seems to me you need to do a better job of monitoring the forum.

So you paid for an incident support and were then told to post your question in this forum?

[xgecko]

No. I have, however, had an incident that was supported by the 30 day support policy. During that time I mentioned my concern that the incident might not be resolved and if they closed it I would have no recourse. They mentioned that I can always use the Forum for future incidents if I do not want to pay for an incident outside my 30 day window. This is fine as long as there is a timely and effective response pattern; however, it took two days and a bit of whining to get a response on this one (a different issue) and that is not something I am real happy about esp. if this turns out to be an issue with VM and not my setup - i.e. the responsiblity is on VM's end and not mine. Conversely, if it does turn out to be something I am responsible for, well then we have an example of why the support model is set up the way it is.

I have the expectation that one way or another vendors must provide timely and effective support for their products esp. if an incident turns out to be in their court. Silly me, perhaps, but that is just how I am.

[Scissor]

No. I have, however, had an incident that was supported by the 30 day support policy. During that time I mentioned my concern that the incident might not be resolved and if they closed it I would have no recourse. They mentioned that I can always use the Forum for future incidents if I do not want to pay for an incident outside my 30 day window.

Tech Support should have made it clear though that these forums are community forums and therefore there is no guarantee that a VMware employee will respond to requests made here. The majority of questions on these forums are answered by other customers of VMware products.

I have the expectation that one way or another vendors must provide timely and effective support for their products esp. if an incident turns out to be in their court. Silly me, perhaps, but that is just how I am.

That is fine, but if you want guaranteed support from VMware then you will need to pay for it. That is the support model that VMware has chosen to implement, and is consistant with many other companies in the software industry.

I think it is a legacy of VMware's history of selling to large enterprise customers. Enterprise customers are willing to pay for support contracts that guarantee resolution of support requests. This allows companies like VMware to pay their support staff. VMware Workstation and Fusion are some of the only VMware products that are sold directly to end users, so typical customers may not be used to this support model.

Let me review your .log file and see if anything pops out at me...

[Scissor]

Notes after looking through your vmware.log file:

- You state that when this problem happens that you need to reboot both the Guest and the Host? Have you tried rebooting only the Guest to see if that resolves the problem?

- The vmware.log seems to span over 3 days. How long does the Clipboard problem typically take to reproduce?

- Are you running any 3rd party Clipboard utilities on your Host or Guest?

- What type of data are you typically copying (text, pictures, other)?

- Just a hunch, but does the problem reproduce if you reconfigure yoru Guest to have 1 vCPU?

Jun 08 09:25:31.427: vmx| DICT                  numvcpus = 2

- BTW, I am jealous of your processor.

Jun 08 09:25:31.121: vmx| CPUID[0]   name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         920  @ 2.67GHz

[Scissor]

One more thing:

- What AntiVirus are you running on your Host? What AntiVirus are you running on your Guest? Any 3rd party firewalls or other "security" software installed?

[xgecko]

I do not know how long it takes, but it happens often. I will track.

Rebooting the guest fixes it temporarily - I guess I got that aspect confused with the network issues that are another incident.

Not sure what the dual cpu bit does but I will try it soon.

You will be both more jealous and perhaps a bit sympathetic when I tell you the story of my system... I put together my first Core i& 920 system back in Dec. '08 as a writeoff. It was based on a Gigabyte board and was always a bit flakey on boot; sometimes it took a few cycles to properly boot. I went back east a year ago this May and was connecting to it remotely to screen email... after two days the system disappeared. When I got home it turned out it had overheated and froze. A few days later it gave up the ghost and I had to run out and buy a new MB from Fry's for $275 and then when I figured out the CPU was also fried I had to overnight a new i&-920 from newegg for another $320...

Needless to say I sent in MB and CPU for warranty service and now my gaming rig runs the original MB and CPU... however, in a twist of irony, when removing the socket protector from the CPU socket I indadvertently brushed my fingers across the (incredibly delicate) fingers and managed to bend some. After painstakingly attempting to unbend them I discovered that one pair of memory slots were dead. That system runs in dual channel mode now... but it makes for a helluva gaming rig!

[xgecko]

No AV in guest due to the fact that it will quickly result in a failure of the networking...

Symantec Endpoint Protection on the Host.

The idea of supporting via forum is all well and good, but I cannot afford a support contract. I have a very hard time with that kind of thing as I feel that charging for support is a disincentive to producing good software yet I recognize that some support issues are the result of brain dead users which need to be charged as a form of penalty. My take is that if I can convince the vendor the issue is a flaw in thier product they are obligated to give me free support on that issue. This can be a grey area at times...

Regardless, thanks for your help. I greatly appreciate it!

[Scissor]

No AV in guest due to the fact that it will quickly result in a failure of the networking...

Symantec Endpoint Protection on the Host.

Hmmm... Symantec. Do you know if the firewall component of SEP is installed as well?

How wedded are you to Symantec? For home users I personally recommend the free Microsoft Security Essentials.

[xgecko]

Hi,

I have Symantec Endpoint Protection installed, not Norton, although I suspect you got that. I did, fwiw, try MSSE on the guest but it had as many if not more issues than SEP did.

I am not exactly a home user; I am a telecommuter. Our company uses SEP. Unfortunately, I personally own VMware which is why I was whining about the cost of support.

It is interesting to note that you do suggest MSSE; my sense is that they actually did a good job with it and your suggestion helps confirm my sense of that. I too recommend it now as it seems well executed.

I do believe that some of my issues lie both with VM and MS (through the OS; I am stunned that the Server Storage issue has remained in Win 7). The Clipboard issue, however, seems to me to be something related solely to the VM as it is such a fundamental part of the OS it is hard to believe anything else in that respect.

Thanks!

[SCOMcat]

Yes, clipboard stops working in VMs.  Should start working again after reboot or VMware restart.  The "really, no kidding, tell us all about it" posts here won't be much use.

The issue as far as I recall  is with the clipboard  itself losing track of what it has stored among VMs, so it doesn't refresh the local clipboard.  This also occurs  with terminal services sessions.  Can't find the links to the problem  description - it's obscure  - but I don't recall any solution or  workaround that worked for me other than restarting VWware or  rebooting.  Restarting some services worked for some people but I don't  recall what runs the remote clipboard services in Windows 7, and that never worked for me anyway.  I've learned to live with it and just restart things as needed.  If you are a heavy uses of clipboards, VMs, or WTS this will occur on occasion. Not saying there is no proper solution or workaround, and it would probably be worth digging into, but I haven't found it yet.

So the root cause is Windows OS and how it manages remote clipboards, but IMO VMware should help work on the solution.  However neither Microsoft or VMware care as they already have your money.  Google the issue and this goes way back.