Tara Kizer Blog

Tara Kizer

Intermittent Copy/Paste Problem in RDP

If you use RDP to remotely connect to your servers, you've probably encountered a clipboard issue where copy/paste stops working.  A quick Google search on the problem indicates you can easily fix the problem by logging out/logging back in or killing/restarting rdpclip.exe on the remote server.  Here's an article which covers this topic.

But what do you do when copy/paste is intermittent?  It works one second, stops working for 5-30 seconds, and then on its own starts working again.  This is what’s occurring in our new non-production environment.  The DBA team is setting up 16 new physical servers and 5 new virtual machines.  I haven’t found a server where this ISN’T happening.  This intermittent copy/paste issue is driving me crazy!

Legacy Comments


Stewart
2011-08-17
re: Intermittent Copy/Paste Problem in RDP
I RDP frequently into boxes and I agree that it comes and goes for me too - with no significant logic on length of time connected.
What I've gotten into doing when it starts is to avoid keyboard shortcuts and highlight the item, right click, and choose copy. Than I right click in destination and choose paste. That works and stops the whole copy and paste doing the last paste in destination system instead of source system.

This seems to do something resync it so it will start working (without restarting) again.

No clue if it helps you.


Tara
2011-08-17
re: Intermittent Copy/Paste Problem in RDP
Thanks Stewart. That's what I have been trying too. That solves it perhaps 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time is a mystery.

Ricky Lively
2011-08-20
re: Intermittent Copy/Paste Problem in RDP
I run into this frequently too, sometimes it helps to use the File / Copy/Paste menu option instead of Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V

SherryS
2011-09-01
re: Intermittent Copy/Paste Problem in RDP
I think there is just some delay. When mine doesn't work. I copy with a control-c, count to 5 and then do the paste with a control-v. You may have solved the delay problem by using alternate methods that take longer because there are more key strokes. Like right click copy, right click paste. of File copy File paste.