Windows – Control copy/paste doesn’t work

copy/pastewindows 7

I have a laptop HP PAVILION dv6-3126er with Windows 7 Home Edition installed. Neither the control copy nor the control paste work (i've tried: Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v, Shift+c, Shift+v, Ctrl+Insert, Shift+Insert).
I've tried to run a system check through CMD with sfc /scannow. It repaired something, but when I restarted it didn't solve the problem.

I've also tried many key combinations (like Alt+Ctrl+fn), but nothing works in any program. In Microsoft Word 2003, in the menu, I have no key combination for copy/paste near them (in my previous computer they've been there – in brackets). Shift+Delete works by the way.

I bought this laptop a few weeks ago, and I discovered this problem within the first days. I have no viruses because I have had no time to even connect it to Internet. Anyways, I checked it for viruses and it is clean. I don't want to do a system restore, because I see no reason to do it for a pretty clean system.

I hope it is not a problem with the laptop itself. Maybe there is another reason. Maybe i need to do some more system checks. Any suggestions?

Best Answer

Does it happen constantly and consistently? That is, does it happen every time you boot and occur from startup to shutdown or does work sometimes?

If it works sometimes, then when it doesn’t, do you happen to have a browser open? If so, do you have some websites that you open regularly?

I ask because there exist programs (especially Flash applets) that copy an empty string to the clipboard in a loop in order to disable copying or pasting. I first discovered this on a web-survey site, but they also exist on other pages in an attempt to prevent users from copying content; however they also block copy/paste from working on the whole system until the applet is killed! (Yes, it’s not very effective copy-protection and incredibly intrusive and sucks CPU cycles, but… um, that’s it.)

What you can try is to view the clipboard to see what happens when you try to copy something. Windows 7 does not have the clipboard viewer (which was limited anyway), so get ClipSpy, then try copying various things to see if they end up in ClipSpy. Try copying some text, copying graphics (press PrintScreen to capture the screen), and try copying some files/folders. Do they show up in ClipSpy? Does the Paste option become available or does it remain grayed? By running these tests, we can narrow down what the problem is.

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