I recent had the fun opportunity of fixing a computer that couldn’t open files because the file’s path was to deep. For the many people who have not had this problem, some Windows programs can only handle file paths that are 255 characters or less. This means that some programs won’t able to open the following file “C:\Documents and Settings\Casey Tech\Audio-Music Files\Music\Archived Flac Files\Intelligent Dance Music\The Future Sound Of London\The Far Out Son of Lung and The Ramblings of a Mad Man\Disc One\03 - Smoking Japanese Babe (Live In South America -Argentina).flac” because there are 262 characters in the file path. The only way to file this problem is to find all of your files with a long file path, and then rename them so that there are 250 files or less
Unfortunately, I have yet to find a free program that can search for long file paths (However, long file name programs are rampant), but I was able to discover a simple way to find them using the command line and a text file. First, open a command prompt by clicking on the Windows Orb and then typing “cmd”and pressing enter. Next, input the following command and press enter.
dir c:\ /s /b > files.txt
Once the command is complete (it may take several minutes if you have a lot of files.), navigate to C:\User\(Your Name)\ if you use Vista or C:\Documents and Settings\(Your Name)\ if you use XP. Open the file called “Files.txt”. 
Now for the boring part, scroll down until you spot a long file path and count the characters. My screen is 1280x800 and was 180 characters wide. I would recommend renaming any files with a file path longer than 240 characters. If your screen is under 240 characters wide, then you can easily just scroll down and until you spot a file path that runs off of your screen. If your screen is wider than 240 characters, then you may want to resize the window so it is narrower. Also, if you have a long list of files, you may want to use the page up and down keys on your keyboard to speed up the process.
Once you file a long file path, you can use Windows Explorer to rename the file, or move it to a different directory. When I found the long file path mentioned at the beginning of this article, I moved and renamed it to ”C:\Home\Casey Tech\Music\Flac\IDM\FSOL\The Far Out Son of Lung and The Ramblings of a Mad Man\01-03- Smoking Japanese Babe (Live In Argentina).flac” Now the file path is only 147 characters long and will no longer be a problem for any programs.
If you have any tricks for dealing with files in Windows, then email us at CaseyTech@GMX.com and put “Dealing With Files” in the subject line, or tell the world by leaving a comment.
