Progra~ ?

[Jack B]

I've got a program, Golf Diary, that I've been trying to get set up under
Vista, and when I look at the properties of the installed shortcut icon
which starts it, in the "start in" box I see C:\PROGRA~1\GOLFDI~1. I
changed the shortcut to start where I want it to start (C:\Program
Files\Golf Diary), and that works, but the start menu shortcut is still
wrong as is the listing in all programs in the start menu.

What is going on here? Why is Vista putting stuff in folders like Progra~1
instead of where I've tried to put them, and how come when I do a search on
C:, I can't even find Progra~1.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Mike Brannigan]

I've got a program, Golf Diary, that I've been trying to get set up under
Vista, and when I look at the properties of the installed shortcut icon
which starts it, in the "start in" box I see C:\PROGRA~1\GOLFDI~1. I
changed the shortcut to start where I want it to start (C:\Program
Files\Golf Diary), and that works, but the start menu shortcut is still
wrong as is the listing in all programs in the start menu.

What is going on here? Why is Vista putting stuff in folders like
Progra~1 instead of where I've tried to put them, and how come when I do a
search on C:, I can't even find Progra~1.

Thanks,

Jack

Those are the backward compatible 8.3 old style DOS path names.
It is possible that the setup engine used by your app is 16-bit and uses the
old paths

open a command prompt cmd
and type in dir /x
and you will see the long ad short names for files and folders.

 

[Adam Leinss]

What is going on here? Why is Vista putting stuff in folders like
Progra~1 instead of where I've tried to put them, and how come when I
do a search on C:, I can't even find Progra~1.

You can't find it, because it's just an alias for programs that do not
understand long filenames, so it truncates them to 8 characters (the limit
before LFN).

I take it Golf Diary is an older program?

Adam

 

[johnm]

I've got a program, Golf Diary, that I've been trying to get set up under
Vista, and when I look at the properties of the installed shortcut icon
which starts it, in the "start in" box I see C:\PROGRA~1\GOLFDI~1. I
changed the shortcut to start where I want it to start (C:\Program
Files\Golf Diary), and that works, but the start menu shortcut is still
wrong as is the listing in all programs in the start menu.

What is going on here? Why is Vista putting stuff in folders like
Progra~1 instead of where I've tried to put them, and how come when I do a
search on C:, I can't even find Progra~1.

Thanks,

those file naming conventions go back to the DOS days when all files were
limited to 8.3 - an eight character filename with a three character
extension.
iow, before there were long file names
so... a "long file name" like "Program Files" gets shortened to progra~1
the tilde +1 (~1) is there in case there are more than one similar file
names.
ie: If you had two folder on C: named respectively, "C:\Program Files" and
"C:\Program Groups", you'd wind up with C:\Progra~1 and C:\Progra~2

now as to WHY this still exists in Windows?
Seems the old explanation still applies:
Windows is a 32-bit extension and GUI shell to a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit
operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor and sold by a
2-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.

 

[Max]

Your install/setup/program could not cope with NTFS long file names, and
thus truncated the path to the old DOS 8.3.
This is not a Vista issue, and no such 'folder' will normally exist.

 

[Jack B]

You can't find it, because it's just an alias for programs that do not
understand long filenames, so it truncates them to 8 characters (the limit
before LFN).

I take it Golf Diary is an older program?

Adam

I don't know if it's older, but when I manually changed the shortcut to
start where I want, in a folder with a path with more than 8 characters, the
program opened ok, with the correct data from that folder. But now I've got
other program start points that apparantly start in the Progra~1 folder, and
then the data is not found, so I want to fix that.

 

[Unicorn]

I've got a program, Golf Diary, that I've been trying to get set up
under Vista, and when I look at the properties of the installed shortcut
icon which starts it, in the "start in" box I see C:\PROGRA~1\GOLFDI~1.
I changed the shortcut to start where I want it to start (C:\Program
Files\Golf Diary), and that works, but the start menu shortcut is still
wrong as is the listing in all programs in the start menu.

What is going on here? Why is Vista putting stuff in folders like
Progra~1 instead of where I've tried to put them, and how come when I do
a search on C:, I can't even find Progra~1.

Thanks,

Jack

Jack, Vista has put them exactly where you said they were. Once upon
a time in the dark ages (before 1995) file names were limited to 8
characters and a 3 character extension (Progra~1 is program files in 8.3
notation). The windows file system for computability still supports
this, so in the background all of your nice descriptive file and folder
names have an 8.3 name allocated as well. Windows does a fairly good
job of hiding this but occasionally things go wrong. Usually caused by
OLD installer programs and anti virus programs fixing things.

Matt

 

[Tinman]

those file naming conventions go back to the DOS days when all files were
limited to 8.3 - an eight character filename with a three character
extension.
iow, before there were long file names

To be clear no one used the truncated ("~1") naming convention before long
filenames were so added to the OS/FAT.

And it ain't just old stuff that uses them. Even good old/young Office 2003
has registry entries containing the short filenames of the installation
folders. This can be a PITA when using some drive copying software that
doesn't identically match the old short names when copying to a new drive
(i.e., MICROS~1, MICROS~2, etc. don't match up to what they were on the old
drive).

Here's a typical registry entry from Office 2003 (Office 11):
"C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~4\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" /e

Sad but true...

 

[Unicorn]

now as to WHY this still exists in Windows?
Seems the old explanation still applies:
Windows is a 32-bit extension and GUI shell to a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit
operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor and sold by a
2-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.

<VBG> Have not heard that for a long time. But so much is still true

 

[Adam Leinss]

I don't know if it's older, but when I manually changed the shortcut
to start where I want, in a folder with a path with more than 8
characters, the program opened ok, with the correct data from that
folder. But now I've got other program start points that apparantly
start in the Progra~1 folder, and then the data is not found, so I
want to fix that.

You should be able to manually peek into the folder, right click on the
golf diary executable and pick "Create Shortcut>Send to Desktop". This
should create a shortcut with the correct paths.

Adam

 

[Scott]

To be clear no one used the truncated ("~1") naming convention before long
filenames were so added to the OS/FAT.

And it ain't just old stuff that uses them. Even good old/young Office 2003
has registry entries containing the short filenames of the installation
folders. This can be a PITA when using some drive copying software that
doesn't identically match the old short names when copying to a new drive
(i.e., MICROS~1, MICROS~2, etc. don't match up to what they were on the old
drive).

Here's a typical registry entry from Office 2003 (Office 11):
"C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~4\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" /e

Well at least it's consistent with the DOS-style file names used by
virtually everything in the Windows folder (and it's subfolders). ;-)
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.

 

[Scott]

<VBG> Have not heard that for a long time. But so much is still true.

Just the fact that Windows still relies on DOS-style file extensions
seems a bit archaic in this day and age don't ya think?

I don't know of any other OS that does.

--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.

 

[Scott]

Your install/setup/program could not cope with NTFS long file names, and
thus truncated the path to the old DOS 8.3.
This is not a Vista issue, and no such 'folder' will normally exist.

I wonder why Microsoft Office 2007 can't cope with NTFS long file
names?

Perhaps the developers at Microsoft should get in touch with the
developers at Microsoft.
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.

 

[johnm]

I wonder why Microsoft Office 2007 can't cope with NTFS long file
names?

Perhaps the developers at Microsoft should get in touch with the
developers at Microsoft.

Amen ..... and then some