-=jowie=-

The problem: Somehow, someway, files have been created on your drive that have a full path name that are too long for you to delete, highlighted by the following error when attempting to SHIFT-DELETE a file in Windows Explorer:

Similarly, if you try opening up a command prompt and try using rmdir /s, you'll get an error stating "The file name is too long.", or "The path xxxxxx is too long.". What's left to do? Format the drive? What if you have other important data on that volume? In my case, I was putting together a robocopy script to backup the files in my c:\user\my_username directory to a network path. In testing out all the switches, I forgot to exclude the AppData folder. When I went back to the destination and attempted to delete the AppData folder, I ran into the issue above. Somehow, inside the AppData folder, were at least 15 or more nested Application Data folders! I somehow really gorked my robocopy script, and no matter what I tried, I couldn't get that directory to go away. I tried the suggestion in the error message to no end, I would get similar errors to what is listed in the screenshot above.  So here is how I fixed it.

The only requirement to using this method is that you need a partition/volume/disk/flash drive/etc that you don't mind formatting. The reason why will become apparent later. The basics of this method is to use robocopy with the /move switch. For complete documentation on robocopy run "robocopy /?" at a command prompt. In my situation, I formatted a flash drive, created a folder on it, shared that folder, then instructed robocopy to move all the data from the problematic directory to the shared folder on another computer(the computer with the problem directory didn't have a memory card reader).

robocopy d:\problematic_folder \\computer1\shared_folder_name /move /e

Afterwards I confirmed that the AppData folder which I could not delete before, was gone. Next I moved to computer1 and simply formatted the flash memory card. I have tested this locally as well, i.e.

robocopy d:\problematic_folder e:\destination_folder /move /e

Next you just format the flash drive / partition / volume / usb thumb drive / etc to clean it up.

Past few weeks have been rather exciting for us folks who own a Mac, yet run Windows on it.

First we see the release of MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.5.1, which I'm happy to report resolves the issue in Vista where from boot, Vista doesn't show the appropriate power source being applied. Basically for the non-techie folk out there, if you booted into Vista, had the power adapter plugged in, Vista didn't know it till you unplugged and replugged the power adapter. A minor annoyance to be sure, but an annoyance none the less.

Second we see the release of Boot Camp Update 2.1, for all current versions of Windows, INCLUDING 64bit Vista, which is new if I recall. The previous versions of Boot Camp prior to this release were all targeted at 32bit versions of Windows. Head on over to the Apple Support Downloads page to find and download Boot Camp 2.1 for Vista 32 and 64bit as well as for XP.

The only thing that's been bugging me for a while is the fact I can't find a change log or a list of bugs fixed for these updates. Can anyone help with that?

UPDATE Jan. 23rd, 2009: IMPORTANT 64bit Win7 info in bold inline. Thanks to all who emailed!
UPDATE Mar. 23rd, 2009: This issue doesn't seem to effect the newer Unibody Macbooks. 

If you take a look over at this post, you can see more details. I was in the Vista SP1 tech beta and downloaded the .iso files that had Vista SP1 slipstreamed into the DVD image, for clean installation. I have a Macbook Pro, and wanted to try out installation of Vista x64 sans bootcamp(which I had done just fine before as the Intel based mac's nowadays include the BIOS compatibility layer in their EFI implementation), but I ran into the issue described in that post above. The last post, from "Jugi"(as of this writing) mentioned:More...