Windows Path Length Limit Reached
INTRO
In many cases, Windows has a default limit of how many characters can make up a complete path to a file. That includes the length of the folder names. The limit is supposedly 260 characters for a path name. But, we've seen it actually stop at 255.
To get around this limit, Windows allows you to make a change in the registry that will allow you to have a much longer path (in terms of number of characters in the path name) up to 32767 characters. A big increase!
Make a registry edit to increase path length
Two ways to make the change. Either run the registry editor yourself (Method 1) or run a prepared script to do it for you (Method 2)
=Method 1: Edit the registry by-hand, if you're comfortable making registry changes
Run Regedit.
The key to change is located at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
The actual key change:
"LongPathsEnabled"=dword:00000001
Then...
Reboot!
Method 2: Run a script to make the change for you.
- Download to your windows system by clicking:
- Unzip the downloaded file Win-LongPathsEnabled.zip
- That will result in a file called LongPathsEnabled.reg
- Double-click LongPathsEnabled.reg to run that file.
- Reboot to activate the change.