Excel 2003 fails to copy/paste when UltraVNC is active

[Sminky]

If I try to copy a spreadsheet using Excel 2003 on any machine which has an open VNC connection it fails with the following message:



As far as I can tell, any open connection on the machine running Excel causes the problem. ie. It happens when I'm using Excel on a remote machine. It happens when I use Excel on my machine and I have an open UltraVNC viewer window.

Disabling the UltraVNC clipboard transfer doesn't help. It still happens.

If I do it on a remote machine the UltraVNC server locks up for about ten minutes before the message appears, I can't do anything. Very annoying.

I'm not trying to select gigabytes of data, the spreadsheet file is 152kb. Here's an example which causes the problem: http://www.artlum.com/vncbug.xls

If you open that file in Excel 2003, select the whole sheet (by clicking in the square at top-left next to 'A' and '1') then do a 'copy' you should get the message.

[B]

I've never heard of <b>anything</b> like this problem. It just sounds as if your copy of Excel is corrupted and that you need to reinstall it. I leave Excel running (and do occasional copy/pasting) while doing VNC client and server activities all the time.

Apparently it also depends on exactly what your formulas are doing, even in a small sheet -- http://www.excelforum.com/excel-general ... urces.html

Obviously, one workaround would be to make a copy of the file in Explorer rather than copying rows and columns.

[Sminky]

I've never heard of <b>anything</b> like this problem. It just sounds as if your copy of Excel is corrupted and that you need to reinstall it.

Nope. It happens on every machine I've tried so far (four of them) with different installations of Excel (one installation is even in Spanish - same thing).

Apparently it also depends on exactly what your formulas are doing, even in a small sheet -- http://www.excelforum.com/excel-general ... urces.html

Sure, but why would it be perfectly happy when there's no VNC connection and fail 100% of the time when there is one?

[B]

I guess most likely because UltraVNC's clipboard transfer isn't really getting completely turned off and some kind of buffer is filling up?

Have you tried this with other brands of VNC? (Tight, Real, etc.)?

Obviously if I had an answer I'd give it, but all I have are questions.

If Rudi or another developer stops by maybe they can help you.

[Sminky]

I guess most likely because UltraVNC's clipboard transfer isn't really getting completely turned off and some kind of buffer is filling up?

Something like that.

If it can't handle a big clipboard (or whatever Excel is doing) at least it should fail gracefully. The business of locking up the machine for ten minutes or more is a real pain.

I just tried it on another machine and it does the same thing. The Excel error message appeared quite quickly but the machine has been unresponsive for about 20 minutes now. I can't use mouse or keyboard on the other machine. If I try to connect with UltraVNC I see "Password accepted" but it doesn't get any further. The machine's hard disk isn't thrashing so I don't think it's lack of RAM.

[nobodyhk]

Probably the same issue here as Sminky's.

I have an Excel file with Macros on a remote machine. When there is an open VNC connection, Excel (2003) will hang there when a Macro proceeds to copy and paste a worksheet. Also, the VNC connection will then halted with the screen frozen. However, every thing works without problem if there is no open VNC connection.

On the remote machine, I run UltraVNC 1.0.9.5 on Windows XP. On my local machine, I use xvnc4viewer 4.1.1 on a linux distribution.

Any suggestions/advice would be much appreciated.

EDIT: Added info about VNC frozen.

[B]

Looks like your answer is to use the "disableclipboard" option on the VIEWER side of things.

http://uvnc.net/install/cmdline.html

[nobodyhk]

Looks like your answer is to use the "disableclipboard" option on the VIEWER side of things.

Thanks for your advice but unfortunately disabling clipboard between server and client doesn't help. In fact, this has also been reported by other users on various forums.

Hope that UltraVNC will have this issue resolved ASAP.