I got that "The file name(s) would be too long for the destination folder. You can shorten the file name and try again, or try a location that has a shorter path" error when I was moving documents across folders. I know there are ways to disable that file path length restriction, but those ways just did not work on my laptop.   offers two solutions to get rid of the restriction, the second of which resorts to the use of Group Policy (dpedit.msc). As I am using a Windows 10 Home Edition, the second solution does not work. I tried to install dpedit.msc as instructed here (), but for some reason it did not work as demonstrated -- I downloaded that zipped folder and ran the extracted setup.exe file. Following the execution, however, I tried to access gpedit.msc command via RUN as well as START Menu search box, but my laptop failed to locate gpedit.msc.  So I tried the first solution. I looked up regedit and followed everything and changed the value date from 0 to 1. It still did not work, even after I logged off, restarted the computer, and logged back in.  This is giving me so much headache, so I appreciate it if someone can shed some light as to what led to the foregoing issues and how to get rid of the file path restriction.  P.S. I am a tech amateur, so any walk-through or explanation in layman terms would best help, thanks!
71113
For some time, Microsoft has supported an option to remove the limit of 260 symbols for NTFS file name length.  The web is full of articles, describing what should be done.   Hit the Windows key, type gpedit.msc and press Enter. Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Filesystem > NTFS. Double click the Enable NTFS long paths option and enable it.   However, I don't have such option. Please see the screenshot below:    Am I missing some Windows update, or is it something else?
3692
What is the longest file path that Windows can handle?
48925
It's hard to search for special characters on google, which is why I'm posting this here.  I recently ran (as root) a mv /tmp/folder/* /* when I meant to run mv /tmp/folder/* ./ Big mistake!  Things broke! A lot of files got mixed up and placed into strange places, none of the normal unix commands worked (ls, dir, cat, etc) and once you logged off, you couldn't ssh back in -- it would give you a prompt, but not accept the old passwords.  Running ls /* shows me that it performs ls on every directory in /. If I tried to draw a parallel, then mv should have simply moved (or copied?) the files to every directory in /. Instead, really weird things happened, and I was just curious what exactly was going on.  More info: The files in /tmp/folder had been transferred from a windows machine, and had been named file (#).txt, where (#) is a number up to two digits, with a space between file and the parenthesis. There were ~40 of these text files.
103762
I currently have a file on the root of my external hard drive simply named ._., which I am guessing was added to my hard drive after using it on my MacBook a while ago.  I'm trying to delete this file on my Windows 10 machine; however Windows keeps claiming the file cannot be found.    I also tried deleting the file through an elevated command prompt; however the same message is returned.    Is there any way I can delete this file from my hard drive through Windows?
42081
I can't use this command in win 7 when want to move a directory if the destination exists. It says Access denied. Why hapens this? It worked in XP.  move /y "%1" c:\mydir\   I can use robocopy, but then it will move only the contents of the folder. not the folder completly.  robocopy "%1" c:\mydir /E /IS /MOVE   How can I solve this problem?
4883
Yes, I realize that defeats the purpose of standard user. But here is the situation. A friend of mine wants to set up time limits for his home schooled son, and his son needs to be a standard user in order to use Family Safety. But at the same time, his son (who I personally think is way too old to have time limits), needs to be able to update and install some of his games on his computer. So I guess it's just sort of "light" parental control (just something to help him focus and not get distracted with hours of gaming).  It is the basic version of Windows 8.1, so there is no Group Policy editor (gpedit.msc). However, I'm fairly good with computers and I figured out how to install it. But it doesn't have a lot of the features that the "real" gpedit seems to have. Here is an example of what is in my gpedit:
17787
I'm trying to delete some folder but this error is preventing from doing it:     Cannot delete [FileName]: It is being used by another person or program.      Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.   How can I identify what application is using the file?   I want to end the application using a Task Manager, but I didn't know what application is using it.  The folder is not shared and my user account is an administrator.
19980
In all versions of Windows, we are unable to rename a file or a folder name as CON without third-party file renaming software. Trying to do this in Windows 7 results in an error:     The specified device name is invalid.   Trying to save a file as con.txt in Notepad leads to a similar error:     This file name is reserved for use by Windows.   Choose another name and try again.   Why can't we name a file or folder CON in Windows?
80399
I have recently changed the location of my Documents folder (originally located in C:\Users\TermoZour\Documents) to C:\Users\TermoZour\OneDrive\Documents so I could sync the documents folder between 2 PCs.  Now I want to remove this "link", but I can't. Whenever I try to "Restore Default Location" it indeed sees the default location as expected, but then it asks me if I want to move all the files from the old directory (OneDrive) to the new one (default Documents directory), so I click yes. After this, it tells me that "it can't remove the folder because there is a folder in the same location that can't be redirected. Access denied."  I tried to move all the files from OneDrive into a separate folder and do the process again, but it gave me the same error.  I tried to choose another new location instead of the default one, but it gave me the same error.
48935
I am in a frustrating situation - no matter how I try, gparted won't let me assign the empty space to the first partition:    The middle partition is blocking me from expanding /dev/sda1. I need to move partition /dev/sda2 to the end of the drive, like so (fabricated image):    Then I will be able to expand first partition:    How to do that? I assume data from /dev/sda2 must be physically copied to end of the drive.
98998
I need to do create a file with a filename such as :&gt;?, is this possible somehow? Windows stops it.
97068
I have an external hard drive with many files (800 GB). I want to copy the entire contents of the external hard drive to my local drive. get many errors about long file name or long file path. Renaming is also not possible because of number of errors.  What can I do about this issue?
27334
when we specify the file path some times we specify like ./filename and some time ../filename what is difference between these two?
25703
Because of traffic reasons I am not able to transfer big files inside my network, unfortunatelly, I need to do such thing everyday.   I usually transfer these files by coping and pasting from my computer to another network drive(\targetIP\targetpath), just like this:    TIs there any tool, Windows configuration or some technique to limit file speed transfer to 10Mb/s?  PS: I don't want to use FTP or another protocol.
57001
Does anybody know how to get rid of the annoying "Working on it ..." Message in the Windows 10 File Explorer.  It stays there (on the right side) for a few seconds to many seconds when opening the file explorer.  OS Window 10 System Partition SSD All other files which are used often are also on a SSD (only one HDD for bigger files which are also not used often, exists)  So showing recent files should really be fast. Also I do not mind if there is an option to deactivate this feature.
64958
I've got a rather large number of files on my Windows drive that have a colon in their name. (These came from unpacking some Unix archives.)   When I try to delete them, Windows (XP) complains that the file does not exist, and refuses to delete it. This happens when trying to delete or rename it from explorer or the command line. Still, chkdsk does not complain about those files nor fix the problem.   Any ideas on how to get rid of them?
97286
I have a backup copy of a previous Windows' Documents and Settings folder which only contains my original user and within 2 more directories: Favorites and Local Settings.  When I try to delete Local Settings I get this error:    When I try to delete Favorites, I get this error:    I ran this in a cmd shell:     attrib *.* -r -a -s -h /s   ...but it did not help, nor did it return any errors/warnings.  I used Unlocker v1.8.5 and LockHunter repeatedly at multiple levels to see if any files are in use, but both always say: No Files Locked.  Update #1:  I was able to rename the directory, which now gives me this warning before (trying to) delete:    If I press Yes (or Yes to All) then I get this error:    Update #2:  I let chkdsk /f run which required a reboot since it's on my primary system partition. During Stage 2 scanning, I received about 40 of these:     Deleting an index entry from index $0 of file 25.   ...followed by:     Deleting index entry cookies in index $I30 of file 37576.   ...but I still get the first error dialog above when trying to delete.  I ran chkdsk again, this time: chkdsk /f /r. Produced no messages. Same result when deleting.  Update #3:  Digging deeper, the 99 is the name of one of many directories located deep in here:     C:\Documents and Settings.OLD\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\address@hotmail.com\SharingMetadata\user@hotmail.com\DFSR\Staging\CS{D4E4AE55-B5E2-F03B-5189-6C4DA6E41788}\   Inside each of those directories were files with names such as:     2300-{C93D01AC-0739-4FD9-88C7-13D2F21A208E}-v2300-{C93D01AC-0739-4FD9-88C7-13D2F21A208E}-v2300-Downloaded.frx   I noticed that, unlike all the directories, I couldn't rename any of these files. I also noticed that the file + dir names were extremely long:  Original directory = 194 characters Filenames = 100+ characters Together the length exceeds the 255-char limit which is bad and would explain the error message I posted in Update #1.  Partial Solution:  Rename all directories until the total path length is less than 100. Afterwards I was able to rename the .frx files, not to mention delete everything inside the Local Settings directory.  This is only a partial solution because these (empty) directories are still not deleteable,      C:\1\2\Favorites\Wien\What To Do..   C:\1\2\Favorites\Photography\FIRE   Same error as above:    Here is what Explorer properties shows for both folders:    Update #4 (another partial solution):  Using harrymc's answer combined with thoroughly reading through this amazing MS-KB article which contains nearly everyone's idea and then some, inconspicuously titled: .  I was able to delete the 2nd folder C:\1\2\Favorites\Photography\FIRE - the problem being that there was an invisible trailing space at the end. I got lucky when I did an auto-complete whilst playing around with the del "\\?\&lt;path&gt;" command which he suggested.  NOTE: A normal del did NOT work, nor did deleting from explorer.  Now all that is left is the first directory C:\1\2\Favorites\Wien\What To Do.. (yes I tried endlessly with multiple combinations of the above solution ;)