Windows 2008 r2 file path length

The path to a specified file consists of one or more components , separated by a special character a backslash , with each component usually being a directory name or file name, but with some notable exceptions discussed below.

It is often critical to the system's interpretation of a path what the beginning, or prefix , of the path looks like. This prefix determines the namespace the path is using, and additionally what special characters are used in which position within the path, including the last character. Each component of a path will also be constrained by the maximum length specified for a particular file system. In general, these rules fall into two categories: short and long. Note that directory names are stored by the file system as a special type of file, but naming rules for files also apply to directory names.

To summarize, a path is simply the string representation of the hierarchy between all of the directories that exist for a particular file or directory name. For Windows API functions that manipulate files, file names can often be relative to the current directory, while some APIs require a fully qualified path. A file name is relative to the current directory if it does not begin with one of the following:.

If a file name begins with only a disk designator but not the backslash after the colon, it is interpreted as a relative path to the current directory on the drive with the specified letter.

Note that the current directory may or may not be the root directory depending on what it was set to during the most recent "change directory" operation on that disk. Examples of this format are as follows:. A path is also said to be relative if it contains "double-dots"; that is, two periods together in one component of the path. This special specifier is used to denote the directory above the current directory, otherwise known as the "parent directory".

Relative paths can combine both example types, for example "C This is useful because, although the system keeps track of the current drive along with the current directory of that drive, it also keeps track of the current directories in each of the different drive letters if your system has more than one , regardless of which drive designator is set as the current drive. In later versions of Windows, changing a registry key or using the Group Policy tool is required to remove the limit.

See Maximum Path Length Limitation for full details. There are two main categories of namespace conventions used in the Windows APIs, commonly referred to as NT namespaces and the Win32 namespaces. The NT namespace was designed to be the lowest level namespace on which other subsystems and namespaces could exist, including the Win32 subsystem and, by extension, the Win32 namespaces.

Early versions of Windows also defined several predefined, or reserved, names for certain special devices such as communications serial and parallel ports and the default display console as part of what is now called the NT device namespace, and are still supported in current versions of Windows for backward compatibility.

The Win32 namespace prefixing and conventions are summarized in this section and the following section, with descriptions of how they are used. Note that these examples are intended for use with the Windows API functions and do not all necessarily work with Windows shell applications such as Windows Explorer.

For this reason there is a wider range of possible paths than is usually available from Windows shell applications, and Windows applications that take advantage of this can be developed using these namespace conventions.

For more information about the normal maximum path limitation, see the previous section Maximum Path Length Limitation. This is how access to physical disks and volumes is accomplished directly, without going through the file system, if the API supports this type of access.

You can access many devices other than disks this way using the CreateFile and DefineDosDevice functions, for example.

For example, if you want to open the system's serial communications port 1, you can use "COM1" in the call to the CreateFile function. This allows you to access those devices directly, bypassing the file system. This works because these device names are created by the system as these devices are enumerated, and some drivers will also create other aliases in the system.

Always check the reference topic for each API to be sure. The global version of this hotfix installs files that have the attributes that are listed in the following tables. The dates and the times for these files on your local computer are displayed in your local time together with your current daylight saving time DST bias.

Additionally, the dates and the times may change when you perform certain operations on the files. Important Windows 7 hotfixes and Windows Server R2 hotfixes are included in the same packages.

However, hotfixes on the Hotfix Request page are listed under both operating systems. Always refer to the "Applies To" section in articles to determine the actual operating system that each hotfix applies to.

The security catalog files, for which the attributes are not listed, are signed with a Microsoft digital signature. To work around this issue, move the file to a location that reduces the path length of the file to less than characters, and then back up the file. Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section. Error in backup of volume name during read: Error [0x] The parameter is incorrect.

Error in backup of volume path during read: Error [0xb] The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect. General information about Backup Schedule Wizard For more information about software update terminology, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:.

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