multiple file copy issue

[Steve Nielsen]

When trying to copy multiple files from a Win98se machine to a WinXP Pro
machine using Microsoft Networking I keep getting this stupid,
brain-dead error:

"Cannot copy file: Cannot read from the source file or disk."

And I yell "What file, you moron?!"

I wind up having to select smaller groups of files and even individual
files to get the rest of them copied. It doesn't seem to matter what the
file type is at all either. None of the files are in use, there are no
allocation errors on the Win98 drive.

I don't ever recall seeing this problem when doing the same functions
with Win98 or Win2K. What did M$ dumb down in XP *this* time?

Steve

 

[David Candy]

Is this from a search window. If so you trying to copy a file in a zip or cab. Files in zips and cabs only exist if a window is open on the zip/cab. They don't exist if in a search window.

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Nope, just an Explorer window, no cabs or zips, just regular old data
files, docs and such.

Steve

 

[Tumbleweed]

When trying to copy multiple files from a Win98se machine to a WinXP Pro
machine using Microsoft Networking I keep getting this stupid,
brain-dead error:

"Cannot copy file: Cannot read from the source file or disk."

And I yell "What file, you moron?!"

I wind up having to select smaller groups of files and even individual
files to get the rest of them copied. It doesn't seem to matter what the
file type is at all either. None of the files are in use, there are no
allocation errors on the Win98 drive.

I don't ever recall seeing this problem when doing the same functions
with Win98 or Win2K. What did M$ dumb down in XP *this* time?

Steve

I have had similar problems (also from win98 to XP Pro), which I believe may
be due to a file name length limitation when used in networking. That is, if
the length of the entire path name is longer than some number of characters
(?250 or so????), networking seems to have an issue with it, and it will
appear at random since some files will just happen to be a character or two
over the limit and others in the same directory wont. So if you have a
really long path name, say machine name\C:\documents and
settings\username\my documents\some folder \some other
folder..etc....filename it may hit that limit and then give you a misleading
error message.

You could try zipping up the set of files you want and then just xferring
the single zip file. If you have a lot of files that will be quicker anyway
as there is an overhead for opening closing creating each file which can add
up. Transferring ~1Gb Mb of files, maybe 50,000 files I found the xfer time
with zip to be about 1/2 compared to xferring the files directly (including
the time to zip).

HTH, thats what worked for me anyway.

 

[David Candy]

http://groups.google.com.au/groups?...en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&sa=N&tab=wg

If there is only 1 post in a thread it means noone answered. Don't bother reading it. Go through these one by one and see if anyone has the same problem (at least one did but he got no answer).

 

[Steve N.]

I have had similar problems (also from win98 to XP Pro), which I believe may
be due to a file name length limitation when used in networking. That is, if
the length of the entire path name is longer than some number of characters
(?250 or so????), networking seems to have an issue with it, and it will
appear at random since some files will just happen to be a character or two
over the limit and others in the same directory wont. So if you have a
really long path name, say machine name\C:\documents and
settings\username\my documents\some folder \some other
folder..etc....filename it may hit that limit and then give you a misleading
error message.

You could try zipping up the set of files you want and then just xferring
the single zip file. If you have a lot of files that will be quicker anyway
as there is an overhead for opening closing creating each file which can add
up. Transferring ~1Gb Mb of files, maybe 50,000 files I found the xfer time
with zip to be about 1/2 compared to xferring the files directly (including
the time to zip).

HTH, thats what worked for me anyway.

I checked that first, it's not a long path/filename problem. Other files
in the same directory with even longer names copied fine. I can
understand if the file was corrupt and could not be read, that's not the
issue anyway, the issue is WinXP puking out a useless error message, in
other words, I want to know WHICH damn file won't copy without having to
dig through every freaking one.

M$ must have some real boneheads for programmers is all I can say.

Steve