Image Texture Node Copy / open / unpack behavior Windows 10
Belnder 2.79b

Hello there,
I've been using Blender now for about three years or so. Recently had to reinstall my system from scratch and after doing all that I noticed a behavior in Blender that is new to me and I want to make it stop lol. 

It seems to me like something it's supposed to do but it didn't used to so I need your help. And here is the question...

When I am in cycles working on a model that has several textures I like to set up the first one with the Principled shader, add my images texture nodes for color/roughness/Normal etc..pretty standard stuff.

In the past I would then copy and paste this to the rest of the materials and then click the little folder icon in the Image Texture Node and it would open to the folder where the materials were for the last texture I applied, I select the new one and move on... 

But now, I click that folder icon and it has a popup called UNPACK with 4 choices to USE/Write/Use/Write in various ways. I have to click the X to clear it all and then I get an OPEN button where i have to then search back to where the textures are....you get the idea. 

How do I stop this?

Thanks in advance
Richard
This happens when you packed your external data into your .blend file. Meaning the textures are stored inside the .blend file.

So when you click this icon, since the pictures are packed, it asks you to do with the packed data.
In your case, you may want to unpack them. If I remember correctly you have the choice between exporting the files into a custom folder, or into the original folders if they still exist, or into subfolders from the .blend file.