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I am finding when I try to rename a file in windows 7, i typically select the file i want to rename, hit F2 (rename) and type the new name.

I've been getting this weird bug which the while file name gets selected again, sometimes right in the middle of me typing. I can sit there and watch it reselect the entire filename every second or so as if someone is invisibly hitting Ctrl+A while typing. I have tried making sure that my keys aren't being pressed, and also have even gotten a new keyboard and this problem still consists.

I know it'll probably be a long shot, but just hoping someone's seen this issue and has a resolution.

This is on a desktop machine, not a laptop, so there's no issue with Trackpad.

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Try booting into safe mode and see if the problem still exists. That would help narrow it down to hardware/drivers or software. – Stephen Jennings Jan 25 '11 at 2:18
I just found this post from googling the exact same problem. It's driving us insane. It's like there's a periodic reselection of the entire text. You'll click in the middle of it to change something, start typing, and it will reselect the whole thing. Of course, this then overwrites the file name with the last character you typed. As far as I can tell it's nothing to do with keyboard input, because I can give focus to any other text box and the problem does not exist. Arrrrrrrrrgggggg. – antsyawn Apr 28 '11 at 6:53
I haven't found a solution to this, but I have narrowed the problem down a little, in our case at least. It seems to only happen when renaming a JPG file on a network drive. If I copy the JPG file locally, the problem does not occur. If I rename some other kind of file on the network drive, the problem does not occur. The network drive is a QNAP NAS. It's as if the code that automatically selects the "everything-but-extension" part of the file name is constantly being triggered. – antsyawn May 2 '11 at 6:49
interesting. for me it's every type of file. – Roy Rico May 2 '11 at 15:19
Is it on a network drive, or on a local drive? – antsyawn May 15 '11 at 0:42
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4 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

It sounds like you're using a laptop and accidentally touching the touchpad. Try disabling it. Or if you have the feature, set it to ignore spurious activity.

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+1 for suggesting the touchpad. I didn't even think of that. – Randolph West Jan 25 '11 at 1:51
Yea, I would've thought of this myself, but i'm a desktop machine. No trackpad at all :( – Roy Rico Feb 13 '11 at 23:17
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up vote 1 down vote

I often resorted to copying to desktop, renaming and then copying back to network. If I access files through Windows 7 'Library' before accessing the server directly (through 'network' in explorer), the problem occurs.

Access the share on the server first and then it doesn't matter how you access the file – rename works fine.

I also discovered if I didn't access the server first, I got "RPC failed" when trying to access the server after using Library (which continued to let me access the server – perverse!).

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Looks like the most recent QNAP firmware will fix this.

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QNAP firmware fix? can you provide more details? is this a fix for hardware? router? windows? – Roy Rico Apr 25 at 20:07
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up vote -1 down vote

I exited Dropbox from the system-tray icon, and it seemed to stop the annoying rename thing from happening.

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thx for the suggestion, but I don't use dropbox. – Roy Rico May 2 '11 at 15:19
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