Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Jason Conger Blog » Blog Archive » Microsoft Terminal Services Clipboard Troubleshooting.

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 06:48:05 GMT

PingBack from http://blogs.msterminalservices.org/conger/2006/11/16/microsoft-terminal-services-clipboard-troubleshooting/

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Kevin Marquette — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:36:14 GMT

Thanks for explaining this. I run several rdp sessions at a time and I lose the use of my clipboard often. Before I tracked it down to mstsc as the problem, I had several hard resets on my machine as I tried not to kick in the monitor.

I did find a small utility that would show me what mstsc session was the problem child. That made things much better.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

elton_saul — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:35:01 GMT

Thanks for the feedback. I hope our Vista improvements make your frustrations disappear! What was the name of this small utility you found?

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Jon Burchel — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 02:13:24 GMT

I restarted my TS session, it didn't fix the problem. I can't copy from a Vista RDP session to a Windows Server 2003 local session. I can copy from the local session TO Vista, but not copy from remote to local. I can copy to and from a remote 2003 session on the same machine. I tried everything you suggested, but nothing has worked, even though Clipboard is selected on my RDP when I connect. :(

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Elton Saul — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 02:46:45 GMT

Jon, the issue you describe *sounds* like a bug I have been trying to track down, but which we have not been able to repro internally. Can you please use the e-mail link (top-right of the blog) to get in contact with us? I will need to get some data from you and it will be easier to do so using mail.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Jon Burchel — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 02:51:57 GMT

Thanks! Wow, responded in less than an hour! :)

Why does my shared clipboard not work?

Sektormedia: Aaron's Brain — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:00:56 GMT

The Terminal Services Team Blog has a great article on why application based clipboard activity can give you headaches in terminal server. Check out their article, Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1). Why does my shared clipboard

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Scooter133 — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 03:15:50 GMT

I typically have 2-7 RDP sessions open at once for the several servers I administer.

When copy and pasting between my local PC and the Session, or from session to session. The copy does not always get into the Local PC clipboard, and/or transferred to the RDP session Clipboard.

Okay that part I can see the above being the issue. Now how about this twist?

If I use the keyboard it takes maybe 12-100 times of hitting CTRL-C I >might< get something in the clipboard. If I right click and select copy 3-4 times I can usually get it.

My Local PC is running Vista Enterprise Ed (x86), the RDP Sessions are

mostly Win2003 R2, though Some Win2003 SP2, Win2000

The Apps I'm copy and pasting from are, IE, Notepad, Command Prompt, MMC

Its really annoying to have to copy multiple times to get somthing on the

Clipboard.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

kg — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:31:38 GMT

I have the same exact issue as Scooter133. I manage about 150-300 servers ranging from Win2k to 2k3 sp2 and only on my Vista system does the clipboard not work. May have to open a premier case if I can't find a fix, I have to be able to use the clipboard.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

kg — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:37:32 GMT

Follow up, I seem to have the most problems from Outlook 2007 to the TS Sessions.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Ondra Spilka — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 07:59:55 GMT

Unbelievable what you're writing.

Upgrade to Vista? no comment...

Will MS gracefully provide fix for other non/Vista systems?

Thanks in advance

elixnk MS gold Partner

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Joe — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 23:42:05 GMT

I have a XP (local) system connecting to W2k system (host) and my cut/paste would just stop working. On my host machine, I killed and restart the rdpclip process but what happens after that is I'm only able to only perform one cut/paster operation. After that, the cut/paste operation seems to be broke again. Any ideas?

joe...

jbozen@stfrancis.edu

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Your Mom — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:12:18 GMT

I too am amazed that you've written such a detailed explanation of the bug, yet offered abslutely no pushbutton solution. At lease write a simple utility that just restarts rdpclip.exe every 20 seconds or something. gosh.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Will Nitschke — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 04:32:46 GMT

My experience with my XP client to a Server 2003 box is that I can always paste from the server back to the terminal client in XP. However, I can't usually paste in the other direction.

If I log out of the session and start it fresh, it usually works for a short while but then pasting stops working.

There should be a bug fix for this erratic behaviour, surely?

www.capitaloffice.com.au

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Ashk — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:12:17 GMT

Its worked for me!. Thank you very much to know about TS sessions.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Christian Waidner — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 13:13:43 GMT

Using XP to connect to a Windows 2003 Server I never had a problem with the clipboard. Using 2 new PCs with Vista I never have been able to transfer a file via copy/paste. Killing and restarting rdpclip had no effect. Still broken for me...

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Dwight Wilbanks — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:52:58 GMT

What is the root cause of this problem?

I have XP Connecting to XP and all sorts of clipboard problems, including errors in Excel, but, in all cases, Restarting RDPClip.exe works find for me. In some cases I just re-initiate the connection, (the old connection drops) and often works find.

I have to do it many times a day. Why only between certain machines while others have no problems?

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Robert — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 15:27:40 GMT

FYI: For all you out there that use RDP on a regular basis and have this issue often I’d suggest using the 'Remote Desktops' MMC provided with the Domain Admin Tools as I haven’t had the Clipboard issue when using it where as I do when I use the RDP client.

Note: This is only personnel experience and I hope you have the same results.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Dwight Wilbanks — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 00:54:28 GMT

Thank you Robert for taking the time to post.

I was able to find a download for it here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c16ae515-c8f4-47ef-a1e4-a8dcbacff8e3&displaylang=en

I extracted the MSI then launched it.

After that I went into MMC and added the remote desktop snap-in.

Is there a way to get the MMC to work more like the RDP client? I'm not administering a server, I'm using a remote workstation.

I want Full Screen! I don't want to re-learn how to use windows again (windows-D will get you to a desktop in RDP, but not in MMC)

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Whit in SF — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:51:17 GMT

I am in tears, I have a handful of servers that cut and paste correctly to my XP laptop, but my most heavily used server, 2K3 does not cut and paste to any of the remote clients.

It can cut and paste to itself and same with my laptop, but not between this server and my laptop.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Whit in SF — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:55:32 GMT

My clipboard is not shared on only one server - Win2K3....all my other servers, this is no issue, but I have to copy ckt ID's and I can't here, very time consuming and confusing.

Thx

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

whall@dsg-us.com — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:57:28 GMT

I didn't have this issue until I upgraded to Windows Vista 64-bit edition.

I manage dozens of servers, so I use Remote Desktop VERY HEAVILY, and need to copy information back and forth a LOT to do my work. I cannot disconnect and reconnect every time this happens.

Is there a more permanent fix for this? Perhaps a patch?

rdpclip utility

Hans — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 23:22:47 GMT

I had this problem as well so I created a quick (.NET 2.0) utility to restart a process and installed on the servers I RD to.

Now it's one click vs. manually killing and restarting rdpclip to resolve immediate copy-paste issues w/ RD.

You're welcome to use it. You need v2.0 of the .NET framework to run it:

http://www.hansifer.com/restartProcess.zip

1) save zip locally

2) unblock zip (in properties of the zip file)

3) extract exe to wherever

4) create a shortcut for the exe

5) edit the Target of the exe shortcut to read "C:\<wherever>\RestartProcess.exe" "rdpclip"

6) put the shortcut somewhere accessible (QuickLaunch bar is a good place)

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: No guarantees. Use this utility at your own risk.

RDP Clipboard Fix Tool

Remko Weijnen — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:17:56 GMT

I put up a small tool on my site that fixes the issue. You can find it here: http://remkoweijnen.nl/blog/2007/10/25/rdp-clipboard-fix/

auto insurance rate

insurance auto — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:49:28 GMT

I haven't been up to much recently. Whatever. I've pretty much been doing nothing worth mentioning. What can I say?

Grumbhr.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

David — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:16:56 GMT

I am running Windows Vista and using RDP to connect to Windows XP. I have not been running with Vista for long, but in the last couple of days I've found that local to remote pasting is failing.

For a while, restarting RDP client fixed the problem but after the first paste I did it would break again. Now even restarting RDP client does not help. None of the above steps fixes this issue.

I have a feeling a restart of Vista will bring me back, but it's a shame as this has been my first negative experience of Vista (only been running with it for a few weeks).

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Elton Saul — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:40:07 GMT

David, have you tried the Vista SP1 release candidate? We fixed some shared clipboard bugs in both the client and server for that release.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

David Swales — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:24:21 GMT

Remko Weijnen tool works. Link above.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Needing Copying — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:52:56 GMT

Is there a fix or a part 2?

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

termserv — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:32:00 GMT

@Needing:

Part 2 is here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ts/archive/2006/11/20/why-does-my-shared-clipboard-not-work-part-2.aspx

How can I troubleshoot to find the "Bad App" causing clipboard problems?

AaronM — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:04:19 GMT

The has been a lot of talk about badly written apps breaking the Clipboard chain. We have this happen quite often and I would like to track down which of our apps is causing the problem. Can you suggest any utilities or methods for troubleshooting and finding the "bad app"? Maybe a utility for viewing the Clipboard chain so that when it happens I can see what apps are missing from it and which are still there? If I can find out which app is causing it, I can make a bug report to the app vendor and possibly get a fix. Other than that, I would have to hope that Microsoft will eventuall come up a with a fix (For XP and 2003). It sounds like Vista is having quite a few issues with this also... We will be on 2003 Terminal server for at least another year. We run about 30 Terminal servers and this is a consistant complaint from our Users. It happens randomly and we have yet to find the cause... Seems to be noticed mostly when running office 2003 on terminal server.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

jay @ dealshop — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:38:13 GMT

Our silly little vista problem with the clipboard is this --- anytime you try and hit the "print screen" button and then go attempt to paste that image into "paint" it says you are not allowed access to the clipboard. End of story.

Every user on earth has been allowed to use this funtion for years and years now, yet somehow we're supposed to think this is not a planned reduction of personal liberty on microsofts doing? Just a mere oversight? I think NOT...

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Ken — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:20:54 GMT

Of all the stupid ways to design clipboard access, Microsoft has come up with a management nightmare again. All that is needed is temporary storage accessable to any application that needs its content. If there is a more convoluted, error-prone solution, Microsoft will unfailingly implement it. No wonder they eliminated the clipboard viewer in Vista and sent us back to the dark ages of pasting to wordpad to confirm the contents of the clipboard! SHEEEEEEESH!!!

Thank goodness for third party clipboard utilities.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Nick Skitch — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:54:41 GMT

While I do appreciate a candid description of what's happening behind the scenes, as an end user I find this infuriating.

I find it completely inexcusable that a dept blog from Microsoft would publish a 'bug' without a fix, and blame it on poorly written software and insinuate that if you upgrade $$ to Vista your problems will lessen. ???

I searched the dominate search engine uncle "Goog" for the answer to my problems and sadly I find that the comments of this post offer more of a solution than the original poster does.

It's a fairly gloomy day for MSFT when the only fix is to restart a buggy process (rdclip.exe) Reminds me of the '3 finger solute' days of win95.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

ELNico (ARG) — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:15:51 GMT

Very usefull and detailed information !

It helps me to resolve all issues with the windows 2k3 clipboard

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Reena Agrawal — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:29:39 GMT

Thanks. That was an interesting read. But i would have liked to know why was it not designed so that the OS controls notifying all the processes about any update on the clipboard instead of the processes doing it themselves. I mean was there any limitation due to which the original design was done this way??

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Ben — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:12:18 GMT

Why has no one here suggested Terminals? Its a godsend, however it suffers from the same issue as the offical Microsoft RDP client... Check it out google for it their site is at codeplex

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Kosher — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:06:51 GMT

Who really cares how it works? It should just friggin work! Makes me want to get a Mac.

Application A talks to APplication B and my blog copies blah blah blah... This is yet another nuance to add to the infinite list.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Kosher — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:08:12 GMT

BTW, I am using Vista and 2008 for the remote server and it still doesn't work!

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Tim — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:05:18 GMT

My problem is that rdpclip.exe just isn't starting on the terminal server session..... But I can't find any info on how to resolve this one anywhere :(

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

John — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:25:33 GMT

I've had this problem connecting from Windows XP SP2 to both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. The workaround I'd found was to toggle the TS config setting for allowing clipboard access, but that also requires logging off/on to start a new RDP session - a big pain. The problem is usually copying from an app in my RDP session back to an app on my local workstation. From this post, I would have thought that copy RDP > paste local would be better (due to the improvements in rdpclip), but it still seems to have issues because killing and restarting rdpclip just fixed the problem for me. The server is Windows 2008 Server, Standard w/o Hyper-V, SP1, 64-bit.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Fooby — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:59:47 GMT

Gotta love a linked list that the API requires the clients to maintain! Well, glad it's been redesigned in the new USER32..

As for the old version with this problem, there is a software workaround for developers... a) record the clipboard sequence number in your WM_DRAWCLIPBOARD handler, b) create a timer in which you call GetClipboardSequenceNumber() and compare to the last number you received in WM_DRAWCLIPBOARD. If those numbers differ, you know you've been dropped from the notification chain (or perhaps some dipshit app has been inserted in front of you and isn't passing along messages), and should re-add yourself. In this way, you can avoid user intervention such as having them restart the application.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Dwight Wilbanks — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:42:57 GMT

@Fooby

Have you considered telling Microsoft? Office is the one that is almost always running when I have problems.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Grant — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:37:35 GMT

This goes a LONG way to explaining the weirdness I have been seeing on my RDP sessions, great article which makes it easy to understand the problem.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Aaron Barker — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:05:49 GMT

Copy and paste wasn't working from my remote XP system to my local Windows 7 system. All I had to do to fix this problem was run RDPCLIP from the remote system. Thanks for the advice!

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Megha — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:08:19 GMT

Great Article. Thanks a lot.

I have been working on Clipboard monitoring application and I am facing problem of clipboard chain broken. Sometimes it happens that some application registered into the clipboard chain and terminated without unregistered which leaves all other applications in clipboard chain without having clipboard change events.

Could you please help on my below questions. It would be really helpful for me.

1. How many clipboard chain will be there and how it differs from application X to application Y?

2. Sometime it happens that some application X getting clipboard event changes but not other application Y. How this could be possible?

3. If some how clipboard chain broken then is there any way to take all application into that chain back to working clipboard chain?

Please let me know if you need any other details.

Thanks,

Megha

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Joe — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:47:50 GMT

People keep referring to killing RDPCLIP as a "fix". It is not a fix - it is a work-around. When no one needs to even think about this (or blog about it) because it "just works", then the issue is "fixed"

As stated by others above, I don't care how it works. Copy/Paste has been a part of Windows since when, day 1? Now it doesn't work properly. Fix it. End of story.

Microsoft - I'm not sure how else to put it, but I'd rather see all of the known issues fixed in your currently released products before you release any NEW products.

Thanks,

- Joe

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Restarts rdpclip.exe on server side — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:00:29 GMT

C:\> taskkill /fi "username eq %USERNAME%" /im rdpclip.exe & rdpclip

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Peter — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:37:36 GMT

Only Microsoft could make such a huge mess of such a simple concept.

I have enough trouble with buggy clipboard behaviour even when not using RDP.

Get a grip on reality Microsoft.

Features for features sake is an infantile approach. It has to WORK RELIABLY.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Peter — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:41:25 GMT

>> "Another reason to upgrade to the best Windows version ever!" (Vista)

Cough, cough, Splutter!...

I hope the authors latest batch of Prozac is better than his 2006 batch...

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Joe — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:39:26 GMT

Seriously, I have to deal with this bug 5 or 6 times per day. Why is the fix (not the work-around) taking so long?

- Joe

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Iain — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:39:49 GMT

As far as I am aware Microsoft are not releasing an update for this. People will just have to live with it or upgrade.

It is quite funny that Microsoft blames badly written software, considering that the only 4 applications that I am running every time the problem occurs are Internet Explorer, Excel, Outlook and SQL Server Management Console.

Anyone else seeing a trend here?

Having said that, Excel is often the cause of this problem.

re: Why does my shared clipboard not work? (Part 1)

Joe — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:49:35 GMT

I hear what you're saying, but using non-Microsoft software is no excuse for a Microsoft piece of software not to work correctly. We all know that the bad-vendor-driver excuse for some BSODs didn't fly, and for the most part, that issue has been fixed.

Too often we're told that we need to uninstall/reinstall (be it drivers, applications or Windows itself), reboot, or upgrade to fix a problem. I think what we're all forgetting is that enough people don't accept the above as solutions - by voicing their displeasure to Microsoft - Microsoft will be forced to fix the issue.

Microsoft - any updates? This problem is still occurring.

- Joe