Is there a way to run a program if its path exceeds MAX_PATH?

Question

I need to spawn processes from my C# program, but in some cases full path to an executable can be more then 256 characters.

I have studied several related topics on this site, as well as this article @MSDN. According to that information this should be possible by using \\?\ prefix, but I still couldn't make it work. It looks like system tries to start the process, but fails. I am getting "SmartScreen has stopped working" message instead.

Am I missing something? Here is my code:

private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    ProcessStartInfo start = new ProcessStartInfo();
    start.Arguments = "";
    start.FileName = @"\\?\c:\11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111\222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222\3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333\444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444\5555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555\6666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666\test.exe";
    start.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Normal;
    start.CreateNoWindow = true;
    int exitCode;
    using (Process proc = Process.Start(start))
    {
        proc.WaitForExit();
        exitCode = proc.ExitCode;
        MessageBox.Show(String.Format("Exit code: {0}", exitCode));
    }
}

I am running this on Windows 10, version 1703 (OS Build 15063.1387).

Possible duplicate of [How to avoid System.IO.PathTooLongException?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/530109/how-to-avoid-system-io-pathtoolongexception) — gunr2171, Oct 24 '18 at 15:31
Do you have control over the box it's running on? Windows supports Symlinks that can be used to shorten the path. — Duston, Oct 24 '18 at 17:03
You can't use this in the .Net version as far as I understand the text, you'll have to call the Windows API directly: "A possible workaround is P/Invoking to the Windows APIs " — Florian p.i., Oct 24 '18 at 17:38
from the error it looks like the issue is in SmartScreen and not your code. — Paweł Łukasik, Oct 27 '18 at 15:05

Is there a way to run a program if its path exceeds MAX_PATH?

0 Answers0