Flatten Folder Failure

[armsys]

I've done extensive tests and still can't get the "Flatten Folder" function to work as described in the manual. I also found the warning message:
folder contains no files: C:\Temp\Folder\
All folders and files are not read-only and can be accessed with full Admin privilege.
Does anyone encounter the similar anomaly?

[admin]

Could you elaborate a bit on the "Failure"...

[armsys]

Could you elaborate a bit on the "Failure"...

Failure = the Folders flattening magic didn't happen.
When I logged my initiating post, Flatten Folder didn't work.
Now, mysteriously, all folders can be flattened fine.

[armsys]

Actually, it succeeds randomly.
When it fails, just exit XYplorer and start it again. Then Flatten Folder function will be restored yet once again.
Very weird!!

[admin]

Looks like a refresh issue. Try F5 to refresh Tree and List.

Is auto-refresh enabled?

[armsys]

Looks like a refresh issue. Try F5 to refresh Tree and List.

Is auto-refresh enabled?

Auto-refresh is always active but Flatten Folder still fails randomly.

[admin]

Are you the only one? (That's a question to the others.)

[armsys]

Are you the only one? (That's a question to the others.)

Appear to be I'm the luck one here!! But why me?

[admin]

I don't know. Note that it also works fine with Auto-refresh OFF.

[armsys]

I don't know. Note that it also works fine with Auto-refresh OFF.

Not sure if the failure has anything to do with Windows services such as Volume Shadow Copy and ASP.NET State Service.

[highend]

I've just tried to flatten a folder (with two subfolders, the deepest one containing a RUNNING XY instance) and I still didn't get a failure message (but ofc the subfolder with XY in it wasn't removed).

[xman]

You are not alone, this happened to me too. After it happened, I tried to flatten the folder repeatedly, even moved it, moved stuff inside and may have tried it on some other folder too. Nothing worked, only restart helped.

That was on my second attempt to use this feature, so it's probably not that uncommon .

Volume Shadow Copy and ASP.NET State Service are not the problem, I don't run these services (to the best of my knowledge).

Still, this is a cool feature!

edit:
After sending this post, I tested the feature again, and got the problem again. This time, I really tried to flatten different folders, even on a different drive. And yes, I also used F5 to refresh stuff. Flattening didn't seem to work no matter what I did.

I also tried F4, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F5 and other refresh options in "View" menu, didn't work. Turning off autorefresh didn't work as well.

Another observation. I get this message on a folder with subfolders, on an empty folder (where this message seems appropriate) and also on a folder with just one file in it. If this makes any difference.

It seems like there is some variable somewhere that gets set and isn't updated when it should be (and is only regenerated on restart).

[armsys]

Thanks for confirming my observation.
To resolve the Flatten Folder failure, the only workaround is to to exit and restart XYplorer. Then , mysteriously the Flatten Folder works as advertised, even no XY config has been altered.
Also, try to install the latest Windows updates.

[Papoulka]

I'm trying to test this. First results indicate that there is something strange, at least on the C: drive. After running XY all morning, I tried to flatten a folder in C:\Temp (which had real files in it) and the operation did nothing. In a fresh instance, the operation worked fine. Then I restarted my personal XY. After that, flatten worked fine within C:\Temp, in both personal and fresh versions.

I'll try again later. FYI, SC flattenfolder() has worked great hundreds of times, mostly on external drives but also in C:\Temp.

BTW, it may help if armsys or xman will post a specific folder structure that fails - something like:

• C:\Temp\Folder1\Folde2\dummy.txt

and be clear about which folder is being flattened.

[xman]

While I can't prove it, it seems this bug works on any folder. The last one I tried

C:\a\
C:\a\b\
C:\a\b\c.txt

Flattening either C:\a\ or C:\a\b\ doesn't work. Nor does any other folder I try, on any drive.