Clipboard not working

[brokenhalo]

Hey guys,

Having a weird issue on a client's laptop, and is becoming a huge pain and taking too many man-hours. I have googled my fingers blue and ran through literally hundreds of forum posts trying to find some sort of solution, to no avail. It seems as though the Clipboard does not work as I cannot copy/paste in any application successfully except for Office applications that use their own clipboard, and even then I get an error. The error I get in Excel when I try to paste is "Cannot empty the clipboard" even though the Office clipboard is empty.

I am finding that this is an actual issue in the clipboard itself. I have copied the clipbrd.exe application from a Windows XP installation and installed it on my personal Windows 7 laptop, and the application works perfectly. I try to use it on her laptop and I get errors. I then installed a 3rd party clipboard viewer (Karen's Clipboard Viewer) on my Windows 7 laptop, and again it works perfectly. I installed it on hers and I get errors as soon as I try to even view the clipboard.

I have found several references online about people who ahve lost the clipboard functionality when using software such as Virtual PC and Remote Desktop. Although my client has XP Mode installed on this machine and occasionally uses Remote Desktop, I cannot say for certain if this issue arose from using those applications and she cannot recall when exactly the problem started.

This problem needs to be solved and I appreciate any leads I can get to get this resolved. Thanks in advance!

Update: Registered ole32.dll as suggested by someone replying to another post in another forum regarding this issue, and that didn't work.

Brad L.
Systems Engineer
Prestige Technologies
bradlaszlo[at]prestigetech.com

http://www.prestigetech.com

"Some things Man was never meant to know. For everything else, there's Google.

 

[linney]

Does it work from Safe Mode, or from Normal Mode but with a different user?

What are you seeing in the Event Viewer? When looking at the Event Viewer, make sure you are an Administrator.

Better troubleshooting capabilities with Windows Vista's Event Viewer

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6108150.html

How to repair the operating system and how to restore the operating system configuration to an earlier point in time in Windows Vista (or 7)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936212/#appliesto

How to analyze the log file entries that the Microsoft Windows Resource Checker (SFC.exe) program generates in Windows Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928228#appliesto

Try running ChkDsk to check your drive for errors. Right-click your Drive icon/ Properties/ Tools/ Error Checking. Try it first by not checking either box (this will run it in a Read-only mode) to see if it flags any hard drive or file problems. If it does, restart it by ticking both boxes, and rerun it to allow it to attempt to fix any found problems.

 

[brokenhalo]

@linney: This issue comes and goes, no matter if she is in safe mode or not. Her clipboard might work for an hour or so, then suddenly stop working. Not sure if this is related, but she mostly works with Microsoft Excel and that is when her clipboard decides to quit working. But if it quits working in Excel, it typically quits working for all programs.

There are no items relating to this in Event Viewer.

System Restore is not an option on this machine at this time for us. This client has been simply dealing with this problem for a while, and has since made many changes that she does not want reverted back by using System Restore.

I cannot imagine that there are any bad sectors in the hard disk that would be causing this problem and I don't think it will do anything, however I will try it.

Has anyone else had this same issue? I see it happening all over the internet

Brad L.
Systems Engineer
Prestige Technologies
bradlaszlo[at]prestigetech.com

http://www.prestigetech.com

"Some things Man was never meant to know. For everything else, there's Google.

 

[kjv1611]

Have you verified there are no "temp file cleaner" type apps running in the background? Many of them clear out the clipboard, which could easily explain it happening some times but not others.

 

[brokenhalo]

Thank for the response, kjv - but no, there is nothing of the sort running in the background. The problem is not that the clipboard clears itself... The proble is that the clipboard actually quits working and received errors if I even try to access it. Sometimes when the clipboard isn't working, all of a sudden it will start working again. Very strange issue

Brad L.
Systems Engineer
Prestige Technologies
bradlaszlo[at]prestigetech.com

http://www.prestigetech.com

"Some things Man was never meant to know. For everything else, there's Google.

 

[kjv1611]

What about the possibility of a bad stick of RAM only showing errors in this spot?

Another thought is that the size of files being copied to the clipboard is causing the clipboard process to encounter errors.

Anything found yet in relation to the hard drive as a possibility? I know you said you'd check into bad sectors. Any scans run so far?

 

[kjv1611]

Also, I'm assuming you've scanned this machine to be sure it's clear of any malware/virus activity. And I'm assuming that you've made sure it isn't an issue with a piece of security software.

 

[linney]

Does the problem occur if you turn off the Office Clipboard?

Copy and paste multiple items by using the Office Clipboard

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/p...ing-the-office-clipboard-HA010163602.aspx#BM3

When the Clipboard fails is there any indication in Task Manager of anything using all the CPU cycles, or of a particular process using an ever increasing amount of memory as in a possible memory leak?

Windows Vista's Task Manager: The harder-to-detect changes

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6161050.html

Can you create a new user on the machine and test with that for similar problems?

Did you try the System File Checker?