Renaming a network folder in Windows 7 Explorer fails with "the action can't be completed..."

9/9/2020

2 minutes to read





In this article

This article provides a solution to an issue where Renaming a network folder in Windows 7 Explorer fails.

Original product version: Windows 7 Service Pack 1

Original KB number: 2025703

Symptoms

Steps to reproduce the issue:

Map a drive to a network share that contains several subfolders that contains images files or PDFs Open an Explorer window and navigate to the parent folder. Attempt to rename each folder successively, while drilling into the subfolder contents. Continue step 3 until an error dialog containing the following text appears indicating that the subfolder cannot be renamed: "The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program. Close the file or folder and try again."

Cause

The folder rename operation fails because thumbcache.dll still has an open handle to the local thumbs.db file and does not currently implement a mechanism to release the handle to the file in a more dynamic and timely fashion.

Resolution

To work around the issue, enable User Group Policy setting for "Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files":

Policy Path User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Explorer Policy Setting "Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files" Policy Value Enabled

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows Alternatively, you can directly edit the registry with the following setting:

To have us edit the registry folders for you, go to the "Fix it for me" section. If you prefer to fix this problem yourself, go to the "Let me fix it myself" section.

Fix it for me

To fix this problem automatically, click the Fix this problem link. Then click Run in the File Download dialog box, and follow the steps in this wizard.

Microsoft Fix it 50790

Note This wizard may be in English only. However, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.

Note If you are not on the computer that has the problem, you can save the automatic fix to a flash drive or to a CD so that you can run it on the computer that has the problem.

Let me fix it myself

You can directly edit the registry with the following setting:

Registry path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer Setting Name "DisableThumbsDBOnNetworkFolders" Type REG_DWORD Value 1

Another workaround is to wait approximately 1-5 minutes then retry the rename operation.