Windows Path Length Limit Reached
Revision as of 18:15, 20 May 2021 by Steve410 (talk | contribs) (→Make a registry edit to increase path length)
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
- Become an admin user on your system.
- Run regedit
- The key to change is located at:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\LongPathsEnabled
- Set the key’s DWORD value to “1”
- Reboot to activate the change.
Method 2: Run a script to make the change for you.
- Download the script to enable long pathnames on 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.
- You may be prompted for admin account credentials. So, enter those to continue.
- Reboot to activate the change.