Windows – Virtualbox Drag and Drop not working, freezes at “Dropping Data 0%”

The problem is tied to how security permissions work. The ability to drag and drop from a normal applications to an elevated one would break the security model behind UAC. However, I'm unclear as to why a UAC prompt isn't shown, thus allowing for a temporary elevated operation (much like any linux user experiences every day). This is definitely something that Microsoft needs to work on. What troubles me is that this problem is already old. Vista behaved the same.

There's 2 things you can do (one ugly, one annoying)

• Ugly: Disable UAC. But you lose all the extra security it offers.
• Annoying: Use another File manager and run it too as an Administrator

Why another file manager? Because you can't actually elevate Windows Explorer. Despite seeing the option in the context menu of the Windows Explorer icon and a UAC prompt being displayed, the fact is Windows Explorer will not be elevated.

I'm using VirtualBox with KxStudio (which uses Ubuntu). It gets stuck at 99% here too. But if you click on the x to close the window, and then go to Home> Documents > VirtualBox Dropped Files, you find it there in a subfolder.

You can then copy it to its desired destination on the guest. So still useful as a way to get files to the guest from the host OS. Might be a useful tip for others in same situation?