Why Does Windows 10/11 Copy and Paste Stop Working After A While?

Anonymous
2023-12-31T13:30:36+00:00

For the last few months my Copy/Paste will stop working after I've been logged-on for awhile. If I log off and back on (no Restart, though), it will start working again... for awhile, that is. It was happening on Windows 10, so I went ahead and upgraded to Windows 11, hoping it would fix the problem, but it didn't.

I've looked through other postings, but most of them involve a Restart, which certainly works but so does a simple log off/log on. I generally don't log out at the end of the day, just lock it. Does anyone have a solution other than creating a whole new profile?

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-08-07T23:21:53+00:00

    One interesting note. I have found that copy paste will stop working for me and 100 percent of the time there are certain applications it will work and certain applications it will not work. For example, when my copy paste stops working I cannot copy out of sql management studio comment excel, command line (CMD). This is all very small text that I'm trying to copy. I also am unable to copy and paste files through Windows Explorer.

    When this happens I CAN copy/paste out of notepad, notepad++, text from web pages (Chrome), etc.

    It's Interesting how the copy/paste seems to break for all Microsoft applications/Windows functions, but at the same time works fine in other applications.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-29T21:57:09+00:00

    Any update? I'm experiencing same/similar issues; mostly noticed on the day's first use when I leave the computer overnight. I suspected "memory leak" in EDGE as I don't think it's a problem if I shutdown EDGE before I let it idle but I haven't been thorough in looking at that. My reliable "fixes" are logout or rebot. Both these indicate the Windows environment and as I am typically authenticated to multiple Windows USERID in my sessions to me again point back to EDGE. I might try and live with Chrome for a day and see if it makes a difference.

    My windows version: Windows 11 Home 23H2 OS build 22631.3227 WFEP 1000.22687.1000.0

    FYI, I'm seeing the same behavior with Firefox and Windows 10 (22H2 build 19045.4170).

    Cut (ctrl-x) works fine, Paste (ctrl-v) does not.

    Killing explorer.exe in Task Manager, and re-launching it from the Task Manager Run... menu option worked for me.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-18T15:47:16+00:00

    I have been around many years and every time I look for a resolve to an issue there are people putting too much into it. I had an issue with copy and paste on all my computers recently and not one person said try turning the clipboard on!

    Recently Microsoft updates in their infinite wisdom disabled the clipboard by default! I figured it out myself as usual.

    CTR + V brings up the clipboard, and just enable it! Problem resolved!

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-18T04:24:39+00:00

    I also began having intermittent failures with the clipboard after a new clean install (necessitated by another, even more serious bug) and upgrade to 23h2. Sometimes it just refuses to copy text from the same program that it copied from before. As advised in one of the other threads on this (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/copy-and-paste-doesnt-work-in-windows-11-unless-i/db68c16b-454b-4601-b984-2b17e9ccfff7?page=1)  I have tried going to

    C:\Windows\System32

    1. Now, search rdpclip in the search bar.
    2. Right Click on rdpclip.exe and Choose Run as Administrator.
    3. Similarly, search dwm.exe in the search bar.
    4. Now, Right Click on dwm and Choose Run as Administrator.
    5. Restart Your Computer [restarted explorer]

    That helped but the problem still persists.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-02-29T16:03:38+00:00

    Any update? I'm experiencing same/similar issues; mostly noticed on the day's first use when I leave the computer overnight. I suspected "memory leak" in EDGE as I don't think it's a problem if I shutdown EDGE before I let it idle but I haven't been thorough in looking at that. My reliable "fixes" are logout or rebot. Both these indicate the Windows environment and as I am typically authenticated to multiple Windows USERID in my sessions to me again point back to EDGE. I might try and live with Chrome for a day and see if it makes a difference.

    My windows version: Windows 11 Home 23H2 OS build 22631.3227 WFEP 1000.22687.1000.0

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