Finding files with paths longer than 255 characters

Back on October 10, 2015, the tip of the night showed how to copy files with paths longer than 255 characters using the subst command. Tonight's tip shows how to detect in a data set file paths that are (with the file names) longer than 255 characters. Remember Windows can handle file paths more than 255 characters. It's Windows Explorer that can't copy files with such paths.

Replsoft puts out a series of utilities that assist with editing challenges. 'Cut Long Names' is available for download at this site: http://www.replsoft.com/cutlongnames.html . You just download one executable file in a zip file. Run it and just select a folder that you want to search. Filter for files with certain extensions and set the minimum length of the file paths (plus names) that you want returned.

You'll get a list of results and the Replsoft utility will automatically create new shorter names that you can direct it to implement.

Windows Event Logs

Event logs are saved by Windows in order to record certain actions taken by the operating system, or software on the system.

In Windows 7 you should see these files saved to this location:

C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs

These can be viewed simply by typing in 'Event Viewer' at Start and opening the Event Viewer application.

You'll see that it provides a summary of administrative events and recently viewed nodes. If you click on the Event Viewer (Local) icon in the pane on the left, a drop down menu will open. Go to Window Logs . . . Application and you should a number of recorded events indicating the time when the computer was in use. Here for the sake of security I have redacted the viewable events except for one. Note that its Event ID is 6000, which indicates that there was unsuccessful login attempt. See the note here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc734033(v=ws.10).aspx

By making reference to the event IDs, you find out a lot about actions taken on a PC.

Windows 7 and other Win OSes older than Windows 2003 have event logs saved with the extension, .evtx, whereas earlier Windows systems had event logs saved with the extension, .evt.

View Reliability History

In Windows 7 you can check the Reliability Monitor to order to check the occurences of application and system failures on a PC by simply typing ' View Reliability History' in Window search. As shown in the screen grab below you can also see when drivers for new storage devices were installed.