Windows 8.1 won't let me drag PC desktop Icons

Hi there, I have two VM setup with parallels.

1. windows XP. This one works great. i can drag / drop between machines fine.. acts exactly as it should..

2. I have windows 8.1 installed which was an upgrade from a windows xp key. This one acts peculiar.. i can drag stuff to the win8 desktop (see the green +) but the items do not actually copy over.. and what's really strange is that i cannot move the desktop icons on the windows 8 side at all! not even moving them around on the desktop.

I have read before the common solution is to "reinstall parallel tools" but this doesn't seem to help. Also on a side note when i opt to do the option in configuration to "share mac user folders with windows" the program gets caught in a constant updating / rebooting issue. it keeps saying.. "you are now configured to do this.. reboot to take effect" and this just keeps happening.

I have my settings mirrored to the XP machine other than a few apparently OS specific options. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Caleb

 

bah.. go figure that this time I reinstall the tools and everything works!

case closed.. i'd reinstalled twice before.. weeks ago.. sorry about the false alarm.

Thanks
Caleb

 

but darn it! just when I thought I was ok.. it stops working again! so yea very strange.. i reinstall the tools, fixes the problem.. then i reboot / use it for awhile and then it stops sharing desktop space.. anyone have any advise, I really could use some help with this. I'm at a loss. I'm running Parallels 8 currently.

 

I am having this exact same problem. Windows 8.1 on Parallels 8.0.18615 on Mac OS X 10.6.8. As soon as I try to drag a file from the Mac Desktop to the Windows Desktop, I get the green plus, but upon releasing the mouse, the file never copies and now I am unable to move any files between Mac or Windows. I have to sign out of Windows (using the Win sign out process) to get it work again.

Did you find a solution for this?

 

So ultimately I never found a solution for that... what i ended up doing was getting an upgrade to Parallels 9 and I secured a standalone copy of Windows 8 (not an upgrade). It is now working. So yea I didn't find a real solution, just basically started fresh with newer software.

 

Hi MarCo Tech,

Parallels Tools when installed, lets you copy and paste between the guest and host OS. Please follow all the steps outlined on the below article:

http://kb.parallels.com/8969

Thanks,
Looran

 

In my experience that only worked temporarily. It would start to work and then next time not work.. you can see above.. so I'm not sure if Marco Tech ever reinstalled parallels tools or not.

 

I'm having this same problem.

I can drag file icons from Windows 8.1 to my Mac desktop,
but when I try to drag a file icon from the Mac desktop to Windows
nothing happens…and after that I can't drag ANY icons around in Windows.
Logging my user out from Windows and logging back in allows me to drag again within Windows.

I have uninstalled Parallels Tools from Windows, restarted, and reinstalled Parallels Tools. No joy.

Parallels Build 8.0.18615
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Windows 8.1

 

I made a new virtual machine with a fresh install of Windows 8.1 (to be sure there were no faulty old Parallels Tools files anywhere)…

Same problem. Trying to drag an icon from the Mac desktop to the Windows desktop doesn't work… AND trying to do so breaks the ability to drag icons around AT ALL in Windows. Click-hold-drag…. Icon does not move.

Sign out, sign back in…then icons can be dragged again.

Broken Parallels is annoying.

 

I re-downloaded and reinstalled Parallels (in case there was something wrong with my installation of that). This did not fix the problem.

Reinstalled Parallels Tools under new install of Parallels. This did not fix the problem.

I made another user account… When Parallels locks up the Windows icon dragging in one account, it does not break icon dragging in the other account. (Alas, switching between open accounts does not un-break the icon dragging, as I'd hoped it might.)

Faulty Parallels continues to be annoying.

Feel free to help me at any time here.