It looks like there are a number of possibilities to cause this copy/paste dropout failure between hosts, so I'll add my fix here. (And yeah, I am aware I'm using different VMWare, different host OS, and different guest OS compared to those specified in this question, but it really seems to be a vmware tools thing, so hopefully it will help some people who land on this page like I did.) Of course you have to have VMWare Tools installed -- update them first probably -- and the guest isolation options must allow copy/paste as others have mentioned.
First my setup:
- HOST - MacOS 10.13.4
- GUESTS - Windows of various versions.
- Fusion - 8.5.10
(Though, this clipboard working and then suddenly not working has been happening in previous versions of MacOS and previous updates to Fusion 8.)
My Fix: Stop the vmware tools service "VMTools," exit/kill the vmware tools tray app, restart the service, restart the vmware tools tray app.
Commands to run in Windows guests, as Administrator: (tested in powershell and CMD)
net.exe stop vmtools
taskkill /F /IM vmtoolsd.exe
net.exe start vmtools
start "" "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\vmtoolsd.exe" "-n" "vmusr"
This is working for me... for now. Of course your mileage may vary, and if you have comments on my answer please let me know. I know the "vmtoolsd.exe" used to be called something else in previous versions. Maybe its startup parameters are the same, maybe not.
I use this in a batch file with a 1-second delay between each line. There are various ways to insert delays, and Rob van der Woude has a rather darn comprehensive list of those ways.
The same general methods may work in other guest OSes, but I don't have the details of how to do that.
I hope this helps someone!