Vista paste stops working
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit, by the way.
Why does the Explorer Paste feature stop working? That is, right-click a file (or folder), and choose Copy. Right-click a destination folder and attempt a Paste, but the Paste option is grayed.
The Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V shortcuts behave the same way. If you shell to a command line, you can copy files. If you restart, the copy and paste features work as expected.
Something sporadic occurs that prohibits the ability to either make the copy of complete the paste. Anyone know what it could be?
Software/Hardware used:
Software/Hardware used:
ASKED:
March 10, 2009 8:55 PM
UPDATED:
July 2, 2009 10:45 AM
Answer Wiki:
Apparently this could be caused by some application locking the clipboard. If you are running some kind of remote desktop connection when the problem occurs, try closing it, since they seem to be the primary suspects for this behavior.
Someone in <a href="http://www.howtofixcomputers.com/bb/ftopic140408.html">this thread</a> suggested to download and run an application called <a href="http://windowsxp.mvps.org/temp/GetOpenClipboardWindow.zip">GetOpenClipboardWindow</a> whose objective is try to open and close the clipboard and report any problems it may encounter.
I have not tested it. Be careful if you decide to use it.
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Incidentally, I haven’t seen this condition since I asked the question. When it recurs, I should verify that other copy / paste functions which involve the clipboard fail as well. I looked into GetOpenClipboardWindow; it seems simple enough and harmless enough. It, along with the Sysinternals Process Explorer utility, should suggest what it locking the clipboard.
Meanwhile, waiting …
Symptom finally recurred.
Copying from Excel to Notepad worked.
GetOpenClipboardWindow reveals no application has the Clipboard locked.
Just couldn’t copy files using Windows Explorer.
Restart, and this symptom is gone.
… running out of ideas…
I can only think of reinstalling the OS service pack at this point.
Please let us know if you finally find a solution.
Cheers,
I see similar symptoms on XP sp3. Copy/Paste does not work between two explorer windows. Closing the source window makes it working again, although usually it will work only for a few times before stalling again.
Cheers,
alf