No clipbook in clipbook viewer

I found the clipbook viewer in Windows XP, no problem. I have the clipbook viewer open, but there's no clipbook window, only the clipboard window. In the File menu, the Share, Stop Sharing, Connect and Disconnect items are all grayed out. All items are grayed out in the Security menu. In the Help, it says I should "click the Window menu, and then click Local ClipBook," but the only windows listed in the Window menu is Clipboard.

I do have the necessary services running: ClipBook, Network DDE, and Network DDE DSDM (whatever that is). Is there anything else I need that might be missing?

Help!!!! I really want to share clipboard contents across my network.

By the way, if I had a working clipbook in Windows XP, would it share pages with the clipbook in Windows for Workgroups?

 

This doesn't specifically address the problem, but Network Clipboard has served me well.

 

Well, no, Network Clipboard doesn't help. I was (see my original post) hoping to share clipbook pages between Windows XP and Windows for Workgroups.

I do have a clipbook in Windows for Workgroups, but not in Windows XP. Network Clipboard would have the opposite problem: I could install it in Windows XP, but it won't install in WfW (Win32s 1.30 chokes on the installer).

 

start~run~clipbrd.exe should start the clipbook viewer for you.

The Connect option certainly should be available along with the clipbook window. If not, it may be a permissions issue. Are you running XP-home or XP-pro (they do security very differently so specific suggestions depend on which version).

Yes, it should work fine with earlier versions of clipbook.

One possibility you need to check for first is a possible virus. W32/Mofei-C will put a clipboard file on your PC and make a registry change that caused it's file to run rather than the normal clipbrd.exe.

Other names for the same critter or it's close cousins:
W32.Femot.Worm [Symantec/Norton] W32/MoFei.worm [McAfee], WORM_MOFEI.A [Trend], WORM_MOFEI.B [Trend], W32/Mofei-A [Sophos], Backdoor.Mofeir.101 [KAV], Worm.Win32.Mofeir.b [KAV], Win32.Mofei.A [CA], Win32.Mofei.B [CA]

 

I had no trouble finding and starting the clipboard viewer; it's just that it doesn't have a clipbook and it's missing a lot of menu options.

I'm running the XP Home version.

Could it be a permissions problem if I always run with administrator privileges?

As for the virus question: I'm running AntiVir Personal Edition, and I just ran System File Checker (would SFC detect if clipbrd.exe was the wrong file?). And Task Manager says the process running as the Clipboard Viewer is executing the file clipbrd.exe, not some other file.

Anyway, I'm ready to try any suggestions.

 

If you run as an admin, you are correct that it shouldn't be a permissions issue. Probably. Just to be sure, try taking ownership of the .exe. Occasionally the system will just seem to get confused about who has what permissions. I've had times when I could take ownership of a file even though I had been denied access to run it. Go figure. And I could run the file after I became the "owner ". Go figure, again.

Good idea on the SFC but in this case it wouldn't help. The original file is still there and still healthy. But the virus makes a registry change so your system looks for the infected file rather than the good real file when you try any of the normal ways of starting the app. I'd double check on this by going to a site with an online AV program and run that. Housecall is good.

start~run~clipbrd.exe on my PC does start clipbook. I've got XP-pro though. I'd expect XP-home to behave the same way but I've been fooled on that before.

 

I ran Housecall. No virus. It found the EICAR test file in backups, and uuencoded in email archives, but that's all. It was scanning my laptop (through the network) when I stopped it.

I don't know about file ownership in Windows XP. But I was able to make clipbrd.exe and clipsrv.exe read-only, and then change them back. I did notice that clipbrd.exe has the archive bit set (most of the files in system32 do not). I don't have time to follow that up today, but there should be a way to restore that file from the CD. Maybe that's the problem (though I can't imagine who or what might have changed the file).

 

Problem still not solved. It took me a few days to explore all the avenues (and blind alleys) I could think of.

I remembered why clipbrd.exe has the archive bit set. It's because (some weeks ago) I removed and reinstalled the "clipboard viewer" accessory to see whether that would fix the problem. I just manually expanded clipbrd.exe and clipsrv.exe and verified that they were the same as the installed files.

I also booted XP into safe mode because I thought some startup programs might be interfering with the clipbook, but clipbook viewer looked exactly the same in safe mode (aside from size on the screen) as it did in a normal boot.

Then I actually resolved a problem I thought was related (but wasn't). I have two NICs, bridged by the software bridge that comes with Windows XP. I thought that might have something to do with the clipbook problem and also with the fact that neither the bridge nor the NICs had "Advanced" tabs in their property sheets. I removed the XP bridge and installed WinBridge, and the NIC property sheets now have advanced tabs. But the clipbook viewer still shows only the clipboard window, not the clipbook, and the same menu items are still grayed out.

Newt, what can I check in the registry? You're suggesting that a virus might have made a change there, but what would I look for? Everything there seems normal to me, though I can't tell what would be normal in the binary values.

I've occasionally made manual changes in the registry, without backing it up, and never had a problem right after the change. If the clipbook problem has anything to do with a past registry change I made, the backups wouldn't be much good now, because they would all be incompatible with the current software configuration. Could I do anything useful with "system restore "?
Again, anything that worked with clipbook viewer would probably be too old for the rest of the system.

Final question: this accessory is called "clipboard viewer" in the list of windows components in control panel, but "clipbook viewer" when it comes up in a window. Is it possible that it's not supposed to have a clipbook in the "home" edition of Windows XP? My clipbrd.exe is 98,816 bytes, clipsrv.exe is 30,720 bytes, and netdde.exe is 105,984 bytes. Any difference from the "pro" edition? And is the file size relevant?

 

Sorry to be replying to my reply to my reply....

It looks as though my "final question" was the right one to ask.

I copied in the clipbrd.exe from Windows NT 4.0 (a much bigger file) and it showed a clipbook window as well as the clipboard window. It also connected to the clipboard on a WfW system, and the WfW system connected to it. But when I tried to paste text to the local clipbook, it said access denied. So that doesn't solve my problem, but it suggests that my WinXP-Home clipbrd.exe simply does not have clipbook capability.

Anybody out there with WinXP Home edition have a clipbook in the clipboard viewer? What's the size of your clipbrd.exe file?