Explorer context menus immediately over-rides Drag & Drop

The vast majority of the time, whenever I try to drag & drop files from one folder to another while pressing the right mouse button in Explorer (i.e, to change the behavior from the default to either copy or move), the Explorer context menu almost immediately takes over, effectively making drag & drop impossible. Although every once in a while it works correctly.

This only happens on my 64-bit Windows 10 Pro (1703) machine; my Windows 7 computers work correctly. I've tried increasing the "show menu" delay time, but it didn't help (and I don't think that's what that setting affects).

What's going on and what can I do to fix this? Any ideas?

Thanks!

When I posted my OP, I hadn't thought about the fact that I'm using the Classic Menus utility in place of Window's default start and other menus. I've been using it for so many years, it slipped my mind.

Anyway, I tried turning Classic off (exiting), but it didn't help.

pepanee said:

What do you mean by the part where once you have your items selected, and you use your Right Click to drag them to another location? Once you're moving your Mouse to the other location, something happens? Or are you able to move your Mouse all the way to the location you want to let go of the Mouse Right Click button? You're not able to reach the menu in the picture I attached?

Hey, thanks a great deal for your reply! I need the help.

First, let me answer your direct question: Yes, I can always see that part of the context menu. And I could theoretically also solve my problem using the "Copy To..." and "Move To..." context menu items, except for the annoying hassle of having to manually navigate to the very folder I already have open in another window.

So I think I should take another stab at explaining my problem... On Windows 7 (and on earlier builds of Windows 10), when I right-click on a file or folder in Explorer and just keep pressing the right mouse button, nothing happens (which is correct). At that point we have two choices:

One: Release the right button without moving the mouse -- this brings up the context menu,at which point we can choose from quite a few options (such as your example of manually selecting "Copy" and then moving to the destination for "Copy Here"). Or...

Two: Drag and Drop the selected items to another visible folder. Now, when you do that, Explorer shows the two additional options of "Copy" or "Move", one of which is in Bold (the default behavior) and the other not bold (the alternate behavior). As you know, Explorer chooses which of the two to bold and make default depending on whether the destination folder is on the same drive letter (move) or a different drive letter (copy). But I don't want to bother examining whether copy or move is the default, so I always explicitly choose what I want to do by right-clicking while I drag and drop. It is exactly this right-clicking that, instead of allowing a drag & drop like it's supposed to do (and does on Win 7), instead pops up the full explorer context menu on my Win 10 computer that is the nasty problem I'm complaining about. When that happens, drag & drop becomes impossible.

So sure, there are alternative methods to copy/move files and folders. But I shouldn't have to use them! Right-click Drag & Drop should work on Win 10 exactly as it does on Win 7.

Note, please, that I'm not blaming Microsoft or Windows 10 for this! There's no question that there's something wrong in some setting or registry value or the like in my particular Win 10 system that's causing this. I somehow messed it up myself, and now I'm asking for help identifying what that something is so that I can fix it.

(I humbly apologize if that long explanation was unnecessary; I certainly don't want to insult anyone's intelligence! It's just that I wanted to express myself more clearly,)

I have to go now, but later I'll try to put together a screen video showing what's going wrong so you can visualize it...

Thenin said:

The vast majority of the time, whenever I try to drag & drop files from one folder to another while pressing the right mouse button in Explorer (i.e, to change the behavior from the default to either copy or move), the Explorer context menu almost immediately takes over, effectively making drag & drop impossible. Although every once in a while it works correctly.

This only happens on my 64-bit Windows 10 Pro (1703) machine; my Windows 7 computers work correctly. I've tried increasing the "show menu" delay time, but it didn't help (and I don't think that's what that setting affects).

What's going on and what can I do to fix this? Any ideas?

Thanks!

Thenin, may I suggest alternative way …
- For copying items press Ctrl and drag selection with (left button) mouse (could be more than one file...)
- for moving items, press SHIFT and drag selection with (left button) mouse


balloon text will appear, noticing what is to be done...

holding CTRL and drag …………….. holding SHIFT and drag

AndreTen said:

Thenin, may I suggest alternative way …
- For copying items press Ctrl and drag selection with (left button) mouse (could be more than one file...)
- for moving items, press SHIFT and drag selection with (left button) mouse


balloon text will appear, noticing what is to be done...

holding CTRL and drag …………….. holding SHIFT and drag

Thank you, wise sir, for bringing this helpful alternative solution to my attention! I wasn't aware of this approach before!

Please don't think I lack appreciation the value of your contribution, but I suspect that I have more clearly identified the problem and as a result, a different solution to try. You see, my long-winded explanation I gave in my previous post slowly triggered an idea: The behavior I was observing is just what I would see if Explorer "believed",], or more likely, "recognized", that I had briefly released the right-click mouse button for the barest of instants. So it just now dawns on me that perhaps there's a hardware problem with my Trackman Marble mouse! Maybe the internal switch has gone flaky!

I should have tried changing my mouse before posting this reply (sorry for my stupidity!), but I'll try that now and report back...

My considerable gratitude goes out to both pepanee and AndreTen for their great patience and wisdom! :)

But I'm extremely embarrassed to confirm that the problem WAS with my ancient wired Trackman Marble all along! I hooked up a Logitech M570 wireless Trackman instead and found that the problem has vanished (oops...)

I love me my Logitech Trackmen Marbles! In my personal experience, they're the most perfect mice ever made. Naturally, Logitech stopped making them decades ago So since I couldn't buy replacements, I've been forced to keep using the two I own since the early or mid 1990s. The one connected to my Windows 10 computer has given me decades of perfect use, but, of course, entropy will always triumph in the end...

Thanks to all!

Glad to see you solved the problem