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I spent a good portion of yesterday reading everything I could find and following steps to enable long file paths (for an NTFS volume). In spite of that, nothing I've tried allows me to rename files to paths longer than 260 characters (I am doing this to attempt to replicate an issue someone reported with some software - they're renaming those files back, but there were associated errors I'd like to reproduce).

Note: I tried both using long file names and a combination of long path + filenames to get more than 260 characters, in addition to using command, explorer, and powershell. Nothing has worked so far.

Here's what I've done so far, as well as some links that I got steps from to follow:

  1. Regedit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Policies - set LongPathsEnabled = 1

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Filesystem/LongPathsEnabled = 1 (this is a DWORD 32 bit value)

I restarted after the above and retested, no luck.

  1. Group Policy Editor - long file paths enabled: Windows-R, gpedit.msc, Local Computer Policy/Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/FileSystem - Enable NTFS long paths

I ran gpupdate after the above. I restarted after the above and retested, no luck.

  1. I tried using powershell: New-Item, Copy-Item, Move-Item, no luck

  2. I tried to use robocopy - looks like people are just using that to access what filenames are too long, not to get longer filenames (from what I've read so far).

  3. I tried using richcopy. No luck.

Am I approaching this wrong? Is there something that I'm missing?

Some links I've read through: https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-enable-ntfs-long-paths-in-windows-10/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/FileIO/naming-a-file#maxpath

Maximum filename length in NTFS (Windows XP and Windows Vista)?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-2000-server/cc976806(v=technet.10)

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/rename-item?view=powershell-6

JakeJ
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  • I also started reading up on NTFS versions to try to double check whether maybe that's causing my problem (maybe the version index is too small), but I have version 3.1 and haven't found anything from what I've read yet. – JakeJ Jun 04 '19 at 15:49
  • I have powershell version 5.1 – JakeJ Jun 04 '19 at 15:57
  • I guess my question is whether there is any program from Microsoft that will save files with > 260 characters in the path + name. – JakeJ Jun 04 '19 at 16:42
  • Update - that person was probably using a Linux based NAS. That makes more sense that they'd be able to get long file paths and I wouldn't. I'm wondering now whether maybe the programs (command, powershell, explorer) just don't support saving long file paths, and what programs do. – JakeJ Jun 05 '19 at 13:31

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