Windows Path Length Limit Reached

Revision as of 17:58, 20 May 2021 by Steve410 (talk | contribs)

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
  • Reboot!

Method 2: Run a script to make the change for you.

  • Download to your windows system by clicking:
https://support.cs.jhu.edu/Win-LongPathsEnabled/Win-LongPathsEnabled.zip
  • 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.