While in CMD shell, copying files from host OS to guest VM locks files (VMware Player/Workstation)

Question

We're running the latest versions of VMWare Player and Workstation for Windows. The following behavior is identical across both products.

Problem: We open a CMD prompt in our guest OS (XP, Vista, Windows 7) and copy files from our host OS using the standard CMD shell copy command:

copy z:\C$\testfiles

The copy completes successfully, but from that point forward, all the files that were copied to our guest OS are now LOCKED on our host OS.

This does not happen if we use Windows Explorer to copy files - it only happens when files are copied via the CMD shell.

As mentioned at the start of this question, this behavior is reproducible in both VMWare Player and VMWare Workstation across multiple machines and multiple guest OS's.

I've googled for a workaround, but without success.

Any ideas appreciated.

Malcolm

Answer 1

Have you tried using Robocopy instead? It should be on Vista/Windows7 out of the box, and you can download an admin resource toolkit to get it on XP. It has multiple copy modes and hopefully, won't do what the old school 'copy' is doing.

An alternate solution would be to grab a utility called Unlocker, which is capable of releasing file locks in most cases. It's quite handy.