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I don't seem to be able to copy and paste any more. Not sure what I did to cause it.

I've tried doing it in several programs, including notepad.

Is there a quick and simple fix for this problem, that doesn't involve restarting my pc?

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possible duplicate of Clipboard stopped working. – Linker3000 Mar 7 '11 at 13:29
@Linker3000 - that question is already flagged as a duplicate of this! And as that one was migrated this one would be better off as the one that remains. – ChrisF Mar 7 '11 at 13:33

3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Found a solution here

Run the following: cmd /c "echo off | clip"

You can even make it into a desktop shortcut if the problem keeps happening.

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how did that make your clipboard work? – barlop Mar 7 '11 at 16:35
It cleared the clipboard. Not sure why that made it work. – Urbycoz Mar 8 '11 at 8:24
1  
This pushes the last app out of the clipboard. May cause a memory leak but as OP noticed, it give you the control back. – Aaron Digulla Apr 12 '11 at 7:20
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This is not working for me: I got an error "ERROR: Access is denied."; The clipboard stopped functioning after I put a big data inside it (around 128mb). – ruffp Jun 22 '12 at 10:12
Can't copy paste that code.. :-) It worked, thank you! – Geo Apr 3 at 16:54
up vote 2 down vote

Simple fix: Try to restart your PC. Doesn't get more simple than that.

As for the possible reasons:

  • Bug in an application: It acquired the clipboard and never freed it
  • Windows ran out of memory a while ago and is now confused. It'll probably crash soon (blue screen).
  • Virus
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Thanks. I was hoping for a method that doesn't involve a restart. – Urbycoz Mar 7 '11 at 14:04
Use the task manager to kill the process that has hung the clipboard. This will likely take an educated guess (you see an app there that you have already closed, yet it still lingers), a lucky guess (random roulette), or a reboot. The random/lucky guesses should be marked on a scrap of paper for next time, so you can make better guesses. – Chris Thornton Apr 9 '11 at 19:55
up vote 2 down vote

For me the problem was happening only when there was a RDC session open to another machine. After closing RDC, clipboard started working again.

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