I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner – checking Google seems to have a solution for almost anything. Once in a while, the copy-and-paste between computers when using Remote Desktop in Windows fails. This is essential if I’m working on a Remote computer and want to paste some text into the host computer.
Confirming you have the problem
The first test to confirm if this is broken is to Copy some text in the remote computer, any text really, and then pasting into Notepad. You can play around in Notepad and you’ll see that Copy/Cut/Paste should work. If it doesn’t, it can still be fixed.
Now, let’s see if you can bring that text over to your Host computer. Again, open up Notepad, and simply try pasting. Logically, if you copied it in the Remote computer, there should be something to paste. If nothing shows up, you have a problem. In that same session, type some random text, cut it and paste it. That should work. Go to your Remote Desktop session, and again in Notepad, try to paste that text. Nothing happens? Here’s the solution.
The Solution
In your Remote computer, open up the Windows Task Manager. Look for the “rdpclip.exe” process. If it exists, kill it. Then in a command window, start it up again (by typing “rdpclip.exe” at your DOS prompt). That should do the trick. You can also try it in your Host computer if you want to be safe.
Code
Use the code below to kill and restart the process in one step:
taskkill.exe /im rdpclip.exe & rdpclip.exe
Resources
For further (technical) reading, check out Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) Team Blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/comments/1089729.aspx