Win 7 characteristic?

I have a network connection from my Win 7 machine to an extension USB drive on my XP machine so I can access text documents on that drive.

I eventually set up a desktop icon on the Win 7 machine with the full path for that operation. If I go one step at a time I can get the documents easily, but if I use the icon I set up to go directly it gives me a copy of the last document I accessed previously instead of the current one.

Possibly related is a situation that seems to change for a reason I don't understand in which sometimes Win 7 will ask me to OK each separate document in that one copy operation to replace the existing/outdated one on the Win 7 machine. At other times it skips that and does an immediate copy - apparently ADDING (instead of replacing) files and adding the "extension" "- COPY OF" to each one.

This all seems to happen at random. I can't find a specific pattern to when or how it happens.

Is this "normal" for Win 7?

(There have been times on XP when half a folder of files suddenly appear with the Copy Of appellation. I've never known why.)