Win7x64 / Win7x64: Clipboard + Drag&Drop not working

[spyro2000]

Host: Win7x64 Pro
Guest: Win7x64 Pro
VBox-Version: 4.3.10
VBox Guest Additions: Installed
Drag & Drop: Bidirectional
Shared Clipboard: Bidirectional


(See attached log file for more details)

I try to get Drag&Drop or at least Clipboard-Support to work for several hours now and did several restarts also. It simply doesn't work, no matter in which direction. VM Guest additions are installed and running...

What else can I do? Thanks for your support.

[mpack]

Drag and drop only works with Linux guests, and only in the host-->guest direction.

Clipboard copy works for all supported guests, but the only data types allowed are clipped text and images. Not files.

Use shared folders to copy files.

[spyro2000]

Hello mpack,

thanks for your response. Maybe it would be great to notify the user of this fundamental constraints? Make a simple message when he tries to copy/paste a file or does a non-supported Drag&Drop-Operation would be nice. For a long time now everyone is struggling with this. I fiddled around for almost two hours to get a feature working which isn't even supposed to work at all.

Seriously: How should I know about all this when there is no information about that in the GUI whatsoever?

Thank you,
spyro

[mpack]

The constraints are given in the user manual and the changelog.

As to giving an error message, that reflects your own lack of understanding. There are two PCs involved here, PC A has no idea that PC B is trying to paste or copy anything, and PC B has no idea that something is supposed to be there. So, at what point would an error message be issued, and by who?

[spyro2000]

A simple message

"Clipboard-Transfer from [Host-OS] to [Guest-OS] is not supported at this time."

and vice-versa would be enough. And maybe some extra text in the menu like "(only text content)".

The best would be, if the menu entries for Drag&Drop were just grayed out if they are not supported for the current configuration at all. The current state will lead to confusion for thousands users ever and ever again.

And regarding my "lack of understanding":
You're right, I don't know how that could be done in code, you're the developer not me.
How did the guys at VMWare implement this feature many years ago? I simply don't know, it just works as expected in all directions. So please don't blame be.

I really like VirtualBox, but I would really, really appreciate working clipboards and drag & drop support for the most common configurations like Windows/Windows, Linux/Windows, Windows/Linux, Linux/Linux. I understand that this might be very difficult to implement, but it's proven, that it CAN work from other virtualization software.

spyro

PS: I looked up this topic in the manual. Here it says:

You can select here whether the clipboard of the guest operating system should be shared with that of your host. If you select "Bidirectional", then VirtualBox will always make sure that both clipboards contain the same data. If you select "Host to guest" or "Guest to host", then VirtualBox will only ever copy clipboard data in one direction.

Clipboard sharing requires that the VirtualBox Guest Additions be installed. As a result, this setting has no effect otherwise; see Chapter 4, Guest Additions for details.

The shared clipboard is disabled by default. See Section 13.3.2.3, “Clipboard” for an explanation. This setting can be changed at any time using the "Shared Clipboard" menu item in the "Devices" menu of the virtual machine.


I'm sorry, but I can't find the part where it says "text content only". No offense.