Windows deletes wrong folder (parent directory)

Emily Boda said:

I am also having problems when I drag the folder directly to the recycling bin. It is ridiculous! I outlined my original problem with pictures:

HOVERING OVER FOLDER



RIGHT-CLICKING ON FOLDER



CONFIRMING CORRECT FOLDER



DELETING PARENT FOLDER!

Your pictures didn't appear.

I just had this happen to me for the second time. As others have pointed out already, when you're an experienced user you hardly even look at the confirmation dialog, you just hit DEL and then ENTER.

The worst part is that it didn't go to the Recycle Bin. Windows popped up a dialog saying that one of the files in the folder I was deleting had a filename that was too long for the Recycle Bin (that never happened on XP!). Of course I hit ENTER again to confirm, and later noticed that I had in fact deleted the parent directory of the directory I was really trying to delete.

In my case it is actually a case of user fault, poorly designed hardware, and poorly designed user interface. It turns out that what really happened was this:

I selected the folder I wanted to delete in the right pane of Explorer. Then, for some reason, I clicked the parent folder in the left pane. I then went back to the right pane and clicked the (now gray) folder that I wanted to delete. Or, so I thought. Turns out the left touchpad button on my HP ProBook doesn't really react if you hit the button left of center. But because Explorer uses the same color to indicate a "mouse-over" or hover on a previously selected, but unfocused, item as it uses to indicate a selected item, I thought I had actually clicked the folder. At this point it was really the parent folder in the left pane that was focused, because my click hadn't really "stuck" (because of the poorly designed button).

Anyway, this might help someone else trying to troubleshoot why parent directories get deleted.

-UPDATE-
So now it happened again, but I actually read the warning dialog for once, and pressed Cancel. It turns out what I wrote above is incorrect - there actually seems to be an issue with Explorer, because in the left pane the parent folder was selected, and in the right pane the folder I wanted to delete was selected. None of them were gray, they were both selected and both appeared to be focused (i.e. blue background). It wasn't until I hit the down arrow key that I could tell it was the left pane that had focus. I have no idea how it happened, and I can't recreate it. When I try, one of the panes always has it's selected item gray (unfocused) and the other one has it blue (focused). All I did was click the parent folder in the left pane, then click the folder I wanted to delete in the right pane, and hit Delete.

Dodgy buttons are a pain.

I have this problem occasionally with my mouse.
It always makes the click noise, but sometimes Windows doesn't receive an actual click "signal".

OMG, it happened to me once, so...I'm not alone...