Long File Names Deleting

[Stringent]

On our server we have a couple of students that have filenames in their area longer than the 128 char limit. Windows wont do anything with these files. Won't rename, wont delete, wont copy, cant see the properties, nothing. We can manage all other files in their home directory just not these. Any suggestions?

[Falcon2004]

How did they manage to make the filename bigger than the 128 characters in the first place? ?:s

[Stringent]

Well whether its longer than 128 chars or not, the file name is mega long and Windows is doing nothing with it. Haven't bothered to count the chars but its something like:

the day I went on holiday and had a really good time and I met this famous star and we went on a cruise.doc

Silly eh.

[Falcon2004]

lol. n00bs...the cause of all lifes technical problems

Can I ask what OS your running?

Edit: (103 charactors btw )

[Stringent]

LOL, yeah I counted the one I typed, that wasn't the filename btw! Windows 2000 Server SP2. We have issues with SP3 and SP4 with other software we run.

The sentance filename (looking at it) is easily double the example I gave. It lets you create them for some bizarre reason, but not do anything with them at a later date. Logged in as the person who created the file and it still wont let us do anything with it. Just stuck there. The filename is more like

once upon a time I met a laptop and the laptoip was very sad because he was a P133 and nothing else would run on him. I decided to pick him up and put linux on, the laptop was happy after that.doc

Dunno how many that is

[Falcon2004]

what exactly can you dow ith it? Ie, can you click on the file and highlight it? move it around the screen? When you right click on it does ANYTHING happen?

[Raz316]

open up a CMD/command window. Browse to the directory they are in and type..

dir /x

find its short name (FILENA~1.EXT or something similar)
del FILENA~1.EXT

not sure if that will work, but worth a try

[Stringent]

When we right click we get all the normal options when you right click a file. It just wont do any of the things you click on, just clicks the menu off.

@Raz316 tried that, comes up File Not Found even though its blatantly listing it, along with its short name.

[Raz316]

hows about

del startoffilename*

(making sure you are specific enough not to delete other legit files)

[directhex]

run scandisk? saved my ass back in the MSDOS days when i ended up with files with spaces in their names

[Stringent]

Hmm in the end, backed up his folder (ignored the long filename) and deleted/recreated his area with the other files. Stupidly easy, but dumb nonetheless.

Strange it let us delete the folder though ... Another weird one for MS.

[Paul Adams]

Might possibly be able to do a wildcard file rename:

Command prompt, navigate to folder the file is in, assume filename is "start of long filename blah..." and there are no other files beginning with the word "start"...

ren start* crap
del crap


I've used this method to be able to remove a corrupt filename before - Windows moved it to the recycle bin but would not empty it from there as it didn't like the filename.