Unable to copy file into Windows container through docker cp command
In Windows or saying Windows container, sometimes docker may not work as expected. For example, when you trying to copy some file to a running Windows container via docker cp somefile.txt ltsc2025:C:\. It gives you an error as below:
docker cp somefile.txt ltsc2025:C:\
time="2025-09-17T10:33:15+01:00" level=error msg="Can't add file \\\\?\\C:\\Temp\\somefile.txt to tar: io: read/write on closed pipe"
time="2025-09-17T10:33:15+01:00" level=error msg="Can't close tar writer: io: read/write on closed pipe"
no such directory
It is really weird as that command work perfectly for Linux type of container. After I googling on web, I found that someone saying that issue is related to Hyper-V and somehow the copy command only work for Windows container in stopped (or it is called exited) state. I have tried and it’s work !
So what I need to do is just to stop the container, copy the file and then start the container again.
docker stop ltsc2025
docker cp somefile.txt ltsc2025:C:\
docker start -i ltsc2025
Note: if you think you need copy file into the container after started, you cannot use option of --rm in docker run as it will remove the container automatically when you stop it.
References: