309102 - copy paste of text not working 70-80% of the time

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Jonathan Perez]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

Whenever you select a piece of text and try to cut or copy it to the clipboard,
very very often, it just refuses to be copied over.  

You have to keep on trying and trying before the text will be successfully
transferred to the clipboard.

Reproducibility is very often, not every time, but not 'sometimes' either.  It
happens annoyingly often.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. highlight text
2. do Ctrl-C, Right Click|Copy, Ctrl-X or Right Click|Cut
3. try to paste onto another application or another input box within Firefox

Actual Results:  
Step 3 will often not complete successfully.

Expected Results:  
should have copied the text to the clipboard

Windows XP SP2

Comment 1

[Jonathan Perez]

extensions installed:

MiniT+ 20050216.6
SessionSaver.2 d1 * nightly 28
undoclosetab 20041125.5
Duplicate Tab 0.5.1

Comment 2

[Tristor]

I was experiencing this issue on my laptop awhile back, but it was more like it
only worked 70% of the time, and failed 30% of the time.  Upon further
investigation, I realized the problem was with my keyboard.  Just to rule it
out, I'd suggest you make sure you keyboard is clean, in good condition, and is
working properly.  Also see if this problem happens in other applications.

Comment 3

[Phil Wells]

I have the same problem - maybe 90% of the time copy and paste works fine, but
the other 10% it does not. Once it stops working I find I usually have to reboot
my machine to fix it (restart of firefox doesn't usually help).

Comment 4

[Phil Wells]

I should add that I have experienced this in *all* versions of Firefox.

Comment 5

[Tristor]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I have the same problem - maybe 90% of the time copy and paste works fine, but
> the other 10% it does not. Once it stops working I find I usually have to reboot
> my machine to fix it (restart of firefox doesn't usually help).

Does it occur in other applications besides Firefox?  I really think this
problem is outside the bounds of Firefox, since copy/paste is done through an
operating system API call, AFAIK.  I would think if it required a reboot to fix,
it is definitely something outside the bounds of our control.

Comment 6

[Steve Grecni]

I think I'm experiencing something similar, (or maybe it's unrelated, if so,
perhaps I should search more/open a new bug)

Sometimes when selecting text I'm not even given the copy option and
ctrl-c/ctrl-insert don't work.  It seems to be happening most often after
opening up a new firefox window by pressing my "new browser window button" on my
logitech usb internet keyboard, or by clicking the quicklaunch icon.  In fact
right now, those are the only reliable ways I can reproduce it.

I never noticed this bug with 1.0.6, only started happening after upgrading to
1.5 b1.  I've since then then started patching to the lastest nightly, but alas,
no love.  I'm attaching a screenshot below of this in action.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20050922 Firefox/1.4

Win XP SP2, dual monitor (nvidia dualview)

Comment 7

[Steve Grecni]

Attachment: notice selected text, but no copy option

notice selected text, but no copy option from right click window

Comment 8

[Tristor]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Created an attachment (id=197041) [edit]
> notice selected text, but no copy option
> 
> notice selected text, but no copy option from right click window

I think this may be a seperate issue, but I definitely think there is a problem
with that.  Can you try to reproduce with a clean profile?

Comment 9

[Steve Grecni]

(In reply to comment #8)
> I think this may be a seperate issue, but I definitely think there is a problem
> with that.  Can you try to reproduce with a clean profile?

I was just able to reproduce this with a clean profile, using 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20050925 Firefox/1.4

Comment 10

[pcgamemaker]

I have a similar issue in 1.5b1 on both WinXP and Linux (x86).

Opening additional windows (after one is already open) using a desktop shortcut,
symlink, directly running the exectuable, etc. often causes cut and paste to not
work in the new window.  All copy and paste options in the right-click menu and
the program menu are disabled and keyboard shortcuts like ctrl+v don't work
either.  Manually typing in text is not a problem though.

If the "New Window" option from the file menu is used instead to open the new
window this does not happen, and additionally, using the "New Window" option
from any open Firefox window always reenables the copy and paste operations in
all currently open windows.  Sometimes using the copy or paste operations in a
window in which they currently work causes these operations to work in all other
windows as well, but not always.

Currently this only seems to occur in 1.5b1 and was not a problem in any of the
previous stable versions up to 1.0.7.

Comment 11

[Steve Grecni]

(In reply to comment #10)
I found if you click the desktop, and then the new window again it fixes it.

Comment 12

[pcgamemaker]

Well, I picked up 1.5b2 earlier tonight and so far it seems to fix all of my
copy/paste issues.  I tried to recreate the problems I was having with 1.5b1 and
couldn't get any to occur.  I didn't see any fixes listed in the change log for
focus issues or copy/paste issues but it works for me at least.  Hopefully this
is fixed for everyone.

Comment 13

[Steve Grecni]

the problem I was having seems to be fixed as well