Vista cut-and-paste, and Explorer problems

michaelpwilson

Hi everyone,

I'm having two separate problems with Vista and I was hoping someone here might be able to help me out. I'm not a newbie and I've already searched for possible solutions to these problems on the net, but I'm getting nowhere.

Problem 1: Cut-and-Paste curiosity

I was trying to free up a hard disk for formatting, and therefore wanted to move everything on that disk to a different disk. Normally this would be no problem, at least in XP. Just cut and paste, right? Not in this case on my Vista machine.

I had a folder on my source hard disk entitled "Digital camera photos" which in turn held folders containing all of my photographs from the last few years. I fired up Vista and did a cut and paste operation from the source hard disk (which I wanted to later wipe), to the new hard disk. There were a few error messages that popped up explaining that various files couldn't be copied because the filenames were too long (something I can't understand - if they were too long, why were they fine on XP?), and I skipped those files pending investigation and filename editing.

After the move operation completed, I examined the folders, something I wouldn't normally do, because I always assume that the move operation has succeeded unless told otherwise. When I examined the tree, I saw that many of the folders on the destination hard disk were missing. More disturbing was the fact that many of the folders which had been moved to the destination hard disk now appeared to be empty. When I examined the source disk, the files were missing there, too. There was a whole bunch of empty folders, although there were some that still contained files that had not been moved across due to filename length restrictions.

Now, I know that the files were originally there on the source hard disk. I'm 100% positive. I don't have any virus or anything else that I can think of on my machine that would delete these items without my knowledge. Neither is it an access control problem as far as I can tell. The source hard disk was originally formatted and used in my old XP machine. When I installed the source hard disk in my Vista machine, I checked the ACL and ownership flags on the folders to make sure I had full access. Vista informs me that I have full control over all of the folders.

I have used the 'takeown' and 'icacls' commands as discussed here which basically takes ownership of folders and sets up the ACL to allow the Administrators group full access. However, when I run the batch file containing these two commands, as described on the aforementioned page, it runs okay for a while whilst taking ownership of the folders, and then Vista spits out a helpful error message window: "Microsoft Windows Operating System has stopped working." Vista doesn't appear to crash or anything like that, but the batch file terminates and never makes it to the icacls command. Nevertheless, I have manually checked the folders in question and Vista says I'm the owner with full access.

As a dessert to this tempting main course, when I attempt to reset the "read only" flag on any of the folders in question on the source hard disk, Vista appears to execute it - but when I go back into the Properties sheet, the read-only attribute is again set.

I'm completely stumped. I've tried everything I can think of, and that's why I'm posting here, hoping that someone may have a solution, or a suggestion. Either would be gratefully accepted. In case it's relevant, my machine is a Phenom 9600 on an Asus M3A32-MVP motherboard with 8GB RAM and four SATA drives installed in a non-RAID configuration, running Vista Ultimate 64-bit. The source disk I mentioned above is PATA. The machine is fully patched with the latest drivers for hardware and updates for Vista.


Problem 2: Explorer navigation using the arrow keys

I've searched for solutions to this as well, to no avail - however, I know other people are experiencing this problem. For me, it's a huge issue.

If you navigate through your disk folders in Vista Explorer using the arrow keys to move up and down the tree, the file list in the right pane of Explorer doesn't necessarily correspond with the highlighted folder in the left pane of the window. It works fine if you use your mouse to click on the folder or drive, but not so when you use the arrow keys. The only way around it as far as I can tell is to press Return after moving up or down the tree.

As far as I'm concerned, this is a very dangerous oversight by MS. I frequently navigate through my many thousands of folders using the arrow keys, because using the mouse in many cases is impractical or cumbersome. But now, I can no longer be sure that the files in the right pane correspond with the highlighted folder in the left pane - which in my view could lead to some pretty disastrous folder-deleting operations. If a folder appears to be empty, I usually delete it - but in Vista, doing this could delete a folder that contains files and other folders. I think it's incredible that MS allowed such a scenario to occur during testing - I can't think of any possible reason why this should have been intended.

Does anyone know a way around this issue? Is there a fix, or a folder setting that I'm unaware of, that allows Vista Explorer to work in the same way as XP Explorer, where the files and highlighted folders always correspond? I would greatly appreciate any information anyone could give.

Sorry for the long message. I wanted to describe the issues as best I could to prevent people making suggestions that I had already tried. Having said that, please don't be afraid to submit any suggestions you might have.


Thanks in advance!