Hyper-V Cut-n-Paste

I use Hyper-V on a development machine for multiple reasons and one of my biggest annoyances is that I can't cut and paste to/from the virtual machines.

I've been through all the options and can't find anything that seems like it would allow this. Does anyone have any good solutions?

I have considered connecting via RDP to the VM instead of using the VPN Client, but one of my VMs is primarily used to connect via VPN to another network, and when I tried to RDP into that machine and then connect to the VPN (using Cisco AnyConnect), I got an error saying I could not connect to the VPN through an RDP session).

Solution 1:

1. Start your Hyper-V machine.
2. Ensure the "Enhanced Session" is disabled/unchecked via the hyper-v top window menu (View -> Enhanced Session).
3. Initiate and connect to your Cisco VPN client session.
4. Once your Cisco session is connected, check to re-enable the "Enhanced Session" menu choice again.
5. The enhanced cut-n-paste should work at this point.

Note: After step 4, my VM forced me to login to the workstation again. Strangely, my Cisco session was not disconnected. There may be some Cisco configuration that may disconnect in this circumstance and cripple this workaround.

Note: Using Cisco AnyConnect v 4.0, and Win10 as the VM

Solution 2:

You can paste text into the virtual machine (Clipboard -> Type Clipboard Text). It should work with Ctrl+V but it regularly doesn't for some reason.

What is annoying is that the Hyper-V manager and SCVMM say they use RDP to connect to the VMs so it should work. Although so should the mouse integration before installing the integration services but that doesn't either.

Solution 3:

If you go to the menu bar and unfold "screen" there is an option to turn on extensive session (or something like that, I don't know, I'm dutch.

If you turn it on, the client will reconnect and the clipboard is now shared.

Solution 4:

For your specific case of wanting to RDP, then connect through VPN, you might try adding another NIC to the VM and using one for VPN and one for RDP.