Yet another bug has been discovered in Windows which results in a false sense of files copied or moved from a ZIP or archive files. The issue is specific when there are files with the same name in the destination folder. It seems the copy command is failing silently without any warning, and it creates a false positive that files have been copied or moved. The biggest drawback is many will end up deleting the ZIP files, and later find the file missing or still have the old version.
Files copied from ZIP file might not have been copied or moved
When you copy files to a destination which is either write protected or has duplicate file names, Windows will prompt if you want to replace these files. When you select yes, it will give no warning, and it will appear that the files were overwritten. However the fact is that they are not overwritten, and the copy or move action has failed. This is reported to be happening in three scenarios:
- When you Copy files from a compressed (.zip) folder to a regular folder.
- Moving from a compressed folder to a regular folder.
- While copying from a compressed folder to a protected folder.
The biggest problem in this scenario is that there is no warning message. The way Move command works is by deleting the destination files, first, and then copy the new files. Since the copy is failing, your original files are deleted or moved to recycle bin. Make sure not to attempt to Cut and Paste items from a compressed (.zip) folder. This may result in unintentionally deleting items that may not be recoverable.
Solution: While Microsoft is working on a fix for this, the solution right now is to first extract the ZIP file into a folder. Then you can perform a copy or move to a new destination to avoid confusion.
If you have faced this issue, and want to recover your files, it’s easy. However, this is assuming that you haven’t emptied the recycle bin.
- Open Recycle Bin > Find your item and right-click to restore.
In case you are not able to find it there, it is possible that you chose to extract it when downloading. Those files are available in your temporary directory.
- In the RUN prompt, type %temp% and hit Enter.
- This will open the temporary directory.
- Search for the zip files you download. If you downloaded the file recently, sort them by modified date, and you will find it faster.
- Copy that file to the desktop or any other drive, and then use it.
Hope this helps.
