zabkat support forum

I believe this happened before (possibly on another machine of mine), but an upgrade to the latest version of x2 solved it. Whenever I attempt a move/copy/paste, the mouse cursor goes into "working mode" for a couple seconds at most, then back to normal and nothing has happened to the files. This happens for any hard disk target (any folder, any drive), even to a USB thumb drive.

All such operations work fine with other file managers.

x2 5.0.0.2 Ultimate
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
20H2 (OS Build 19042.985)

Any ideas?

use REGEDIT and check this key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\ZabaraKatranemia Plc\xplorer2_UC
binFileOpFlags should be 0

if it is set to some other value, quit xplorer2, then change the value to 0

Yes, that registry flag is set to zero.

This is a weird one!

when things get weird, usually your antivirus is to blame

can you copy files with F5/F6 keys?

You'll also want to make sure that (on Windows 10) Windows Defender's Controlled Folder Access is not enabled.

Settings --> Update and Security --> Windows Security --> Open Windows Security button --> Virus & threat protection --> Manage Settings --> Manage Controlled folder access

If it is on, and you did not want it on / don't need it on, turn it off.

If it is on and you do want it on, then you'll need to add Xplorer² to the allowed list by going to Allow an app through Controlled folder access.

If you need more help on this subject, or want to understand it better, here are a few tutorials from the tenforums site (a place I frequent a lot):

Enable / Disable CFA:

Add / remove an app to / from CFA:

Add / remove folders from CFA protection:

A couple of others, dealing with context menu for CFA and using the context menu item:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/114 ... -10-a.html

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/114 ... -10-a.html

No, file copying and moving via F5 and F6 does not work.

Controlled Folder Access was set to Off.

I probably should have tried this before now: I uninstalled x2 and reinstalled it, and the file actions now work. I don't know what the underlying cause was, but I did find that x2 was able to create a file when I exported its settings. And, during the uninstall process I opted to keep the registry entries and license file for the reinstall.

Root cause:

Wind-blows.

Final answer.

The saga continues, and I post this as much for future reference by others as anything else.

A lot of experimentation boiled it down to Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V working only sometimes, and further investigation indicates TeraCopy was a factor. (Whether it is the victim or the perpetrator, I still do not yet know.) Uninstalling TeraCopy sees the issue go away. Reinstalling it (version 3.8.5, the latest available), I now see a popup menu (from TeraCopy) when attempting to move items in x2. The options given are to use TeraCopy to overwrite always, have TC overwrite older targets, or use Explorer to paste the files. Only the latter works.

Now, in the past this all worked without issue across multiple versions of TeraCopy and x2, over years of usage. However, there has been at least one Windows 10 update in the last week or two, so there are still too many variables here. If I can get back to this I might try an older version of x2 to see what happens.

Even more frustrating, two other machines with what I believe are the same configurations (with respect to x2 and TeraCopy) are working just fine all the way around.

So much fun, so little time...

compare your teracopy versions and settings where things work and where they don't

As well as Windows installation (basic stuff, the architecture, version, and Updates installed).