How to get file dates to change after renaming file in Win7-64?

[brocks]

Is there some registry switch or something in Windows 7 to make the file dates reflect changes to the names of files?

I'm not talking about adding columns to Windows Explorer; I know how to do that. I'm talking about the basic file information in the WIN32_FIND_DATA structure. It has three date fields:

FILETIME ftCreationTime;
FILETIME ftLastAccessTime;
FILETIME ftLastWriteTime;

If I rename an old file, I would expect at least the Access Time, and maybe the LastWrite time, to be changed. But after I rename a file, neither date is changed when I run VC++ in debug mode, do a FindFirstFile on the directory, and look at the file's WIN32_FIND_DATA structure in the watch window.

Of course I'm using NTFS on Win 7. Any help appreciated.

 

[Nothinman]

I believe last access updates are disabled by default because of the I/O they incur and relative infrequency that they're used but there should be a registry option to re-enable that.

However, the modify time shouldn't be updated by a rename because you're not modifying the file, you're modifying it's parent directory.

 

[brocks]

However, the modify time shouldn't be updated by a rename because you're not modifying the file, you're modifying it's parent directory.

Thanks, that makes sense. If anyone knows the name of the registry parm I need to change, please post it here.

Update: I think I found it, here.

They also give a command to turn LastAccessTime on and off (restart required):

fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 0