Why Windows 10 Shows Message “This will cancel all transfers in progress”?

Last night when I was trying to shutdown Windows 10 PC, I suddenly saw a small strange message box with a title “This will cancel all transfers in progress” and with a confirmation message “Are you sure you want to cancel the transfers?” but without any further explanation.

When you search about this strange message box online, nothing much is available except some other people also wondering about this. The first thought that everyone asks is whether this is a malware. I myself became suspicious about malware infection and analyzed the window using many different tools.

Why am I seeing this message?

So what is this message about? It is a message displayed by Windows File Explorer. As anyone can imagine, it is displayed when you try to close Windows File Explorer process when some file operations are in progress. A very good scenario that I was able to repeat multiple times is when you computer’s storage drive has been idle for some time and then you suddenly start a file operation followed by system shutdown request.

This will cancel all transfers

For example, you were watching a YouTube video for some time, then you think of shutting down the PC and going to sleep. So you quickly close the browser, proceed to empty the recycle bin, then on Windows desktop you hit Alt+F4 to bring the classic shutdown dialog and proceed to shutdown the Windows. You might see this strange message appear.

How can I avoid this message in future?

One way to stop this message is by increasing system RAM or replacing the existing RAM modules to larger capacity ones. This will ensure that your system uses RAM instead of virtual memory when some programs become too large to fit on the limited amount of RAM your system has. Microsoft recommends at least 8 GB of RAM if you want better performance from your system.

If you system has a hard drive, then it could be part of the problem. You can start by upgrading to a solid state drive (SSD). When the hard drive has been idle and with disk caching enabled, it takes a few seconds for the hard drive to get ready and the file operation to be completed. Disk caching makes hard drive perform better because it buffers everything instead of actually writing to the hard drive. But this also means that the file operations are not instant and require a few extra seconds. If in the meanwhile, you start shutting down Windows, the file operations are incomplete and File Explorer might show you that strange message.

There is nothing to be done really. But if you want to avoid seeing this message, then just wait half a minute after starting any file operations (especially related to emptying of the recycle bin because these operations are invisible) before shutting down the Windows. It seems to appear when you use classic shutdown dialog, so you should start using the new shutdown using Start menu in Windows 10.

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