deleting a file or folder on shared network folder deletes all items

Question

A user occasionally experiences an issue where they delete a folder or file from a shared network folder but everything in that folder is deleted not just the item(s) they had selected. I also suggested, instead of using the delete key, they try Right-click Delete but the result was the same. This issue randomly occurs, it happened twice this week. No other users have reported the same issue. This issue creates a lot of "rework" for this user, they are somewhat "savy" so I don't think it's a user created issue (ie typo, miskey, slip of a mouse click, etc).
The user has Sperry Software - Save As PDF Pro installed which interacts with this network folder, maybe it is causing this behavior
It's an AD domain environment, Files server is 2019 datacenter, the user is on the latest build of Win10.

Has anyone else experienced this? Where should I start on this?

Answer 1

Hi,

That sounds like a rather odd issue.

I'd first go check on the following:
Is this "savvy" user deleting the files 1 by 1 through the Save As form (when trying to save a document using the software)?
What about when browsing to the explorer? Any difference in deleting files there?
Any other users facing this issue?
Always a specific network folder (with underlying folders)? (And when using multiple fileshare servers, do others work well?)
(If its only noticed inside the Sperry Software, consider reinstalling it?)

Based on that reinstall the 3rd party tooling, or creating a new share (if it is just one network share and underlying folders which start to act up it could be worth considering to migrate to a new share).

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Hi JelleHoekstra-2419,
Thanks for the input. To answer some of those questions and to clarify a bit:
The user is deleting the files through Windows explorer only
There is no interface to perform actions on files within the Sperry software. It is an Outlook add-in that monitors the Outlook folder you specify and, if an email meets the criteria you specify, it performs an action. In this case, the Save as PDF monitors the Inbox for certain senders and/or certain content/attachments, if it matches, then it prints to PDF the email/attachment(s) to PDF file and saves to one particular shared network folder.
There are no other users using the Sperry software at our company.
There is only one File Server and the software is only set to save to one particular folder on that file share.

My first suspicion is the Sperry software (Outlook add-in) which of course runs on the same machine and user account as the affected user, however, I still want to consider other possibilities.
I have opened a support ticket with Sperry software and I will be investigating the add-ins activity.
I am speculating that, when the issue occurs, the add-in is performing some process at the same moment this user is deleting a folder(s)/file(s). Maybe the add-in is querying all the files in this folder to check filenames so that it does not create a file with the same name but again this is an educated guess.

Answer 3

Download and run Process Monitor on the user's PC.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

If the network drive is mapped with a drive letter, in the filter menu, add an entry for "path begins with N:\" (whatever the drive letter is). Or add a "path contains xxxxx" where xxxx is something in the folder path that identifies the folder you are testing with.

Have the user recreate the problem. Check procmon where you should see a delete for the file. Do you also see the other files/folders being deleted? What process is issuing the delete? Explorer.exe?

Another thought would be to open a command prompt and just "del N:\SomeFolder\SomeTestFile.txt" and see if just that one file gets deleted.

Answer 4

I appreciate everyone's tips and suggestions.
Sperry support had me perform a clean install. I will advise once this has had some time to bake.
MotoX80, I will try procmon and CMD Del a try if the issue returns.