vmWare Workstation - unable to drag and drop or copy and paste

My VMware host is a Windows 7 machine, and I'm running Workstation 10.

This has worked for me on several VMs where I had the same problem, including my Windows 10 VM:

  1. Completely shut down the VM on which you want to change the settings, close all other VMs that you have open, and exit out of VMware.
  2. Start VMware by clicking 'Run as Administrator'.
  3. Before starting the VM, disable both 'Enable drag and drop' and 'Enable copy and paste' in the VM's 'Guest Isolation' setting on the Options tab.
  4. Exit from the settings GUI.
  5. Do step 3 again but enable them instead.
  6. Start the VM. This should allow the copy and paste to work.

Sometimes I've had to follow these steps a few times before it would work, but this ultimately solved the problem each time I tried it.