Cannot delete a file with a too long name

[horst]

I found that I still have a "Sandboxie" folder although I had
uninstalled it.
So I decided to delete it but I got a message telling that it couldn't
delete a file because its name was too long.
Actually there is a a .htm file whose name is 111 characters long.
No way to rename, move or delete it.
I got the same error when I tried to delete it in the DOS window.
Any suggestion please?
Thanks
Horst

 

[Meinolf Weber]

Hello horst,

Try move it to another location where you have full access (c-drive for example
and delete it there). If this doesn't help, you can try with robocopy.exe
to move it to external drive and even if it seems to be on the disk, you
should be now able to delete it. After that format the external drive and
you should get rid of it. Did it this way 2 weeks ago with a complete folder
structure and works.

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers
no rights.
** Please do NOT email, only reply to Newsgroups
** HELP us help YOU!!! http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm

 

[John John (MVP)]

Try substituting the folder in which the file resides for a drive then
try deleting the file from the substituted drive. At the Command Prompt:

SUBST x: "c:\Program Files\Some Program Name"

To delete the substituted drive:

SUBST x: /d

John

 

[h.stroph]

In

So I decided to delete it but I got a message telling that it couldn't
delete a file because its name was too long.
Actually there is a a .htm file whose name is 111 characters long.
No way to rename, move or delete it.
I got the same error when I tried to delete it in the DOS window.
Any suggestion please?

Assuming a file named "somehelluvalongfilenamethatstoolongtotype", in a
command window take advantage of the legacy 8.3 convention:

dir /x some*

will show you the 8.3 filename e.g. "somehe~1" which you can then delete:

del somehe~1

 

[Fan924]

Drag and drop it into the RECYCLED folder and forget about it.

 

[horst]

In

Assuming a file named "somehelluvalongfilenamethatstoolongtotype", in a
command window take advantage of the legacy 8.3 convention:

dir /x some*

will show you the 8.3 filename e.g. "somehe~1" which you can then delete:

del somehe~1

Dear friends,

thank you all for your suggestions, though none did work.
But luckily I realized that while the name of the file was only(!) 111
characters long, the whole path was 160 characters long!
i.e. 160+111=271 way more than the maximum allowed length (260)!
Although the calculation is more complex as shown in
http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2005/12/15/504240.aspx (only for
those who really want to enter into the details of the matter!)
And so I renamed the 160 character long path to just
C:\a\b\c\d\e\f\g\h\i\j\k\ and then I was able to delete the file and the
whole path!
Thank you again
Horst

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Dear friends,

thank you all for your suggestions, though none did work.
But luckily I realized that while the name of the file was only(!) 111
characters long, the whole path was 160 characters long!
i.e. 160+111=271 way more than the maximum allowed length (260)!
Although the calculation is more complex as shown in
http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2005/12/15/504240.aspx (only for
those who really want to enter into the details of the matter!)
And so I renamed the 160 character long path to just
C:\a\b\c\d\e\f\g\h\i\j\k\ and then I was able to delete the file and the
whole path!
Thank you again
Horst

John's suggestion would have worked very nicely, provided that
you access the "undeletable" file from drive X:, not from drive C:.

 

[horst]

John's suggestion would have worked very nicely, provided that
you access the "undeletable" file from drive X:, not from drive C:.

I was just curious to see if you are right: I recreated the file
(restoring it from a backup) and used John's suggestion.
Actually the command
SUBST x: /d
just eliminates the path x: but not its content.
So I tried in the DOS window (as it is not accepted in the command line)
DEL p:\*.*
and it worked IMHO only because the total length of the path+file name
was now reduced to about 111 characters.
Horst

 

[John John (MVP)]

I was just curious to see if you are right: I recreated the file
(restoring it from a backup) and used John's suggestion.
Actually the command
SUBST x: /d
just eliminates the path x: but not its content.
So I tried in the DOS window (as it is not accepted in the command line)
DEL p:\*.*
and it worked IMHO only because the total length of the path+file name
was now reduced to about 111 characters.

Maybe I should have given more instructions in my post. When I said
"delete the file from the substituted drive" it meant to navigate to
drive X: and try deleting the file there, or from a command prompt to
use X: for the path (del X:\filename.ext). SUBST x: /d was meant to
tell you how to remove the substituted drive after you were done,
deleting a substituted drive doesn't remove its contents.

And by the way, the so-called "long filename" always includes the path,
hence why I suggested substituting the drive, as you had said that the
actual filename (without the path) was only 111 characters, the problem
had to be the length of the path and by using the subst command the path
was reduced to 3 characters. Had you said that the actual name was
greater than 255 characters I would have suggested a different method,
using the subst command would not have sufficiently reduce the filename
length.

John

 

[horst]

Maybe I should have given more instructions in my post. When I said
"delete the file from the substituted drive" it meant to navigate to
drive X: and try deleting the file there, or from a command prompt to
use X: for the path (del X:\filename.ext). SUBST x: /d was meant to
tell you how to remove the substituted drive after you were done,
deleting a substituted drive doesn't remove its contents.

And by the way, the so-called "long filename" always includes the path,
hence why I suggested substituting the drive, as you had said that the
actual filename (without the path) was only 111 characters, the problem
had to be the length of the path and by using the subst command the path
was reduced to 3 characters. Had you said that the actual name was
greater than 255 characters I would have suggested a different method,
using the subst command would not have sufficiently reduce the filename
length.

John

Thank you, John, for your detailed explanations.
The only thing I didn't understand is why DEL X:\*.* does work in the
DOS window but not in the Windows execute line.
Horst

 

[John John (MVP)]

The only thing I didn't understand is why DEL X:\*.* does work in the
DOS window but not in the Windows execute line.

It's not a DOS window, there is no DOS in any of the NT family of
operating systems. It doesn't work in the Run box because del is a
Cmd.exe extension, it's an extended command that can only be run by cmd.exe.

John

 

[3c273]

---snip---

And by the way, the so-called "long filename" always includes the path,
hence why I suggested substituting the drive, as you had said that the
actual filename (without the path) was only 111 characters, the problem
had to be the length of the path and by using the subst command the path
was reduced to 3 characters. Had you said that the actual name was
greater than 255 characters I would have suggested a different method,
using the subst command would not have sufficiently reduce the filename
length.

John

Out of curiosity, what method would you have suggested if the name/path was
over 255 characters? Also, I never understood how the OS could write a file
that it can't delete without resorting to some trick. I find these in
people's TIF folders all the time. Any insight as to how they get writen in
the first place? Thanks.

Louis

 

[John John (MVP)]

---snip---



Out of curiosity, what method would you have suggested if the name/path was
over 255 characters? Also, I never understood how the OS could write a file
that it can't delete without resorting to some trick. I find these in
people's TIF folders all the time. Any insight as to how they get writen in
the first place? Thanks.

The maximum path is well over 32,000 characters (in 255 character
segments, c:\<255 Characters>\<255 Characters\<255...). While the usual
Windows tools and programs expect the path to be less than 260
characters there are other tools that can traverse deep paths, as you
have already mentioned IE for example can traverse deep paths, that is
important for web tools as folders on web servers can easily exceed the
260 character path limit. The tools that create these deep paths can
also delete them, IE for example can delete its own TIF files.

Backup utilities are another group of tools that can usually traverse
deep paths, that too is important when backing up deeply nested shares.
With that in mind Robocopy should be able to delete a deeply nested
file or a file with a filename exceeding 255 characters:

robocopy c:\LongPath J:\ LongFileName.ext /mov

J: could be a flash drive or an empty partition, the /mov option will
delete the source file after the copy operation, after the move the
clip/partition could be formated if need be.

John

 

[3c273]

The maximum path is well over 32,000 characters (in 255 character
segments, c:\<255 Characters>\<255 Characters\<255...). While the usual
Windows tools and programs expect the path to be less than 260
characters there are other tools that can traverse deep paths, as you
have already mentioned IE for example can traverse deep paths, that is
important for web tools as folders on web servers can easily exceed the
260 character path limit. The tools that create these deep paths can
also delete them, IE for example can delete its own TIF files.

Backup utilities are another group of tools that can usually traverse
deep paths, that too is important when backing up deeply nested shares.
With that in mind Robocopy should be able to delete a deeply nested
file or a file with a filename exceeding 255 characters:

robocopy c:\LongPath J:\ LongFileName.ext /mov

J: could be a flash drive or an empty partition, the /mov option will
delete the source file after the copy operation, after the move the
clip/partition could be formated if need be.

John

Thanks for taking the time.

Louis

 

[John John (MVP)]

Thanks for taking the time.

You're welcome.

John

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

No need to buy a commercial product - setting up a network share
or a substituted drive that points into the middle of the excessively
long path will give you full access to the otherwise inaccessible files.

 

[Thomas Encole]

Being a software engineer and holder of a vast database i will say that these type of problem will ever remain in your computing experience and the only solution is a smart software which is available at this site: http://www.longpathtool.com ,it will solve all such issues,it can also efficiently search for all such files present in your data which are having long paths,you can fix omit and delete all with an option of stopping it to be used by any application.