terrible file explorer bug found

[Southern Patriot]

The bug is in the standard listview control and actually existed in XP as well (not a regression). Although the bug wasn't exposed in Explorer in XP because XP doesn't use full-row select. It was apparently in Vista for a long long time and never reported by any beta testers (and it was definitely an oversight by internal testing but they can't find them all - that's why we have betas!) until I saw this thead here.

It's ugly, I won't deny that. But very, very few people will ever hit it in normal use. I also don't really see it causing anyone to actually lose anything since the dialog that comes up accurately tells you what you're trying to delete - plus the recycle bin and volume shadow copy are pretty good safety nets for just this sort of thing. We're all on vacation this week but I'll follow up soon and figure out if/when a fix might be pushed to WU.

Just a reminder, this bug is still there in the RTM. And despite what you say, I do run across it rather frequently. If I'm not paying attention, I can easily delete far more than I intend to. Personally I wish that there was an option to revert Vista's version of Explorer to XP-like behavior. Oh, and there is one instance where it is difficult to tell what you are really deleting: when you are deleting a subfolder that happens to have the same name as the parent folder.

Edited February 15, 2007 by roadwarrior

[Brandon Live Veteran]

It will be fixed, I'm just not sure if it will be in one of the pre-SP1 releases or not.

It was there for nearly a year before anyone reported it, though, so it is pretty rare. Most people don't even use the navigation tree, and it only affects Details view. Though I do realize that's no excuse for broken behavior. I'll see what I can find out about that fix.