The Path is Too Deep

Heh. Path too long – too many characters in the path name. Probably over 254 in total.
Main screen turn on.

I got this same error yesterday while copying a file to a network file server. It poped up just as the file finished transfering. My co-worker and I stared at the error with dumb founded looks. The file that transfered was good so I have no clue why we got the error.

Apparently your computer has taken the path less traveled by.

My Maxtor Retrospective backup utility suffers from this anomaly.
Evidently we're still living in the era where character strings possess a 1 or 2 byte long count. So these program fail if c:/a/b/c/d/e/f/g.h
is “too long”. (Assuming a, b, c, d, e, f, and g represent multiple characters.) Lack of attention to this kind of detail is why software sucks. This will continue ad nauseum as long as the bean counters run the software projects instead of the engineers. Don't hold your breath wating for Micro$uck or Rotten Apple to fix this. Never gonna happen. Switch to Linux.

Hey Chris, can you post an audio blog of the sound of one hand clapping for us?

I get errors like this all the time while attempting to browse the files on another computer on an XP workgroup, while connecting through a wi-fi (801.11b) connection. Never have been able to figure out why.

Try using no spaces and no “special characters” like hyphens. Works for me every time.
BJ

I am getting this as well. I think it has to do with the MFT size. I show it as being 99% used.

Interesting, I'm getting this connecting to a samba server over an 802.11g wireless aerial. I recon windows file sharing is just a bit flaky over a lossy network…

I have seen this error and the File is NOT to long. Seen files that meet basic 8×3 dos names and still get it. Noticed that the file “appears” to copy, but get an error when trying to open it (Power Point stuff).
Try copying again and it goes fine… driving me nuts.
WTF?
Microsoft knowledge base about useless.

Got this error message today while copying an MP3 to a network share. Windows XP Pro – Wireless B Network. Weird…hung at 99% copied..then this error message

PC and laptop on XP SP2. Both connected to a new Linksys wireless N router. Laptop is connected on wireless, PC is wired.

I share the files and can now get the PCs to see each other folders, but I get 2 kinds of errors when copying files.

The laptop to PC I get “cannot copy path too deep”. From the PC to laptop, I get “path now invalid”.

I contacted Linksys but they said it is not their router. I have seen several postings elsewhere on routers causing the problems but no real solutions.

I can copy small files but once I pass 100M, I get one of those errors.

I have found no solution yet.

Hey, I get this problem all the time when copying files back and forth from different sources. Usually on removable devices but not limited to them. A work around is to try make a copy of hte file in the same folder and then move the copy to wherever you want to move it to. Failing that, the other option is to make a zip file from the file you’re trying to move. I’ve tried with just sending it to the default WIndows XP compressed folder and that worked, but trying to use WinRar generated an error… hope this helps…

[...] The path is too deep?  What the hell does that mean???? I did a google search of the message in quotes and the first item that showed up was from a gentleman named Chris Pirillo who states, "Pardon me, but what the FICK is this supposed to mean?! “The Path is Too Deep.” What, has my computer been waxing existential again?" [...]

Hey ….
I m getting the same msg…
I took backup of my system to a usb harddrive of 100 GB. My data was total 66 GB. My data was copied easily to usb drive. But when i copied it to system i was getting this error again and again. Anyhow according to me the reason was sub foldrs… i got folder sub folder sub folder and sub folders… i copied data and some data was not copied and giving errors…
but my big problem became mails PST of 3.88 GB. It was on almost root of my usb but giving same error… i m much worried about my data in usb and don’t know wat to do….
if u have any solution u can mail me … :(

path is too long xfer over LAN with file and Print sharing. You can try specifying the adapter connect speed (both ends) instead of using autodetect. With wireless… again, try setting the the connection type b/g etc… instead of autodetect. as for the usb….. hmmmmm, one hand claps……. not sure about that one. I would try zipping the problem folders up , xferring the zip file over, and unzipping in the appropriate place… then uninstall windows, and build a linux box. :)

This error message can come from a failing hard disk drive. Run the manufacturer’s diagnostic program on the drive. Of course, if you have a Toshiba drive, you will not find their diagnostic program. I recommend SpinRite. This error message appears to spawn when the drive electronic’s times out trying to read data but gives the OS the wrong signal.

I’ve seen this several times for different reasons. Path 254 characters or longer (including file name, that is). More than 10 spaces in a file path (back in Windoze 95 days – don’t know if still get the same behavior). Most insidiously, on network shares, drive letter mapped path that is shorter than 254 characters (e.g., H:\(longpath)\file.txt), but the file path on the server itself is longer than 254 characters (e.g., (blah blah servername)\(sharename)\(subsharename)\(longpath)\file.txt).

Don’t blame Micro$oft. If it weren’t for them I’d had to get an honest job.

After plowing through the forums like so many others; this problem seems to have been going on since 2004, maybe longer. Well, its May 7, 2007 and I just received this for the first time. Am I lucky? I doubt it. All I was attempting
to do was copy a music file (mp3) from an internal hard drive on my laptop to an external 2.0 USB drive. After several attempts failed, I decided to copy the file so a secondary location on my internal drive and then attempt another copy. I’m not saying I solved the problem. I am saying it worked like a charm and I’m a happy camper. Will this work for you? I don’t know but you have nothing to loose but try it.

Been happening to me too. Tried shortening filnames, moving them to different locations on my system. STILL doesn’t work. Using a straight crossover connection between two laptops running XP. One has a CD writer the other doesn’t, and the one that doesn’t is the one with all the files on. It used to work all the time, now literally this last week its started giving me this fecking error message and I don’t understand it. That and the connection being lost or runout (when it hasn’t as a quick ping reveals). What the hell is this thing??!!!

After a wasted afternoon shortening the path of the source and target, mapping a drive letter and failing, I copied the folder I wanted to move to another XP Pro box, to the root of the C drive and then from a command prompt used xcopy *.* G: (ie target folder). Long live Dos.

yeah, I think bloort got it right. I changed the connection type of both Ethernet cards from 100BaseTx Full Duplex to 10BaseT Full Duplex and now the link works perfectly, just a hell of a lot slower.

Right click the Local Area Connection icon > Status > Properties >Configuration >Advanced > Connection Type

I had the same problem copying a file from one drive to a memory card

The file is was copying was

I:\heroes.mp4

to

Q:\heroes.mp4

so obviously the path length and depth wasn’t a problem. I tried the copy in Windows XP (which gave me the error) and windows Vista which just froze the copy box.

I tried 2 cables in 3 different usb ports and still had the error.

I fixed the problem by formatting the Memory card and trying again….worked fine first time…i can only assume there was a minor corruption in the File allocation table that was causing it to error when writing to the memory card as deleting from the card worked fine.

For people having problems on LAN’s they could possible try running a hard drive check for errors….

As stupid as it sounds, i was trying to copy a video from a flash card, and i got this message all the time “path too deep”, so i googled it and i found this forum….. after finding no answers, i tried something… i changed the name of the video and the extension, i renamed the dscf023.avi to picture.jpg and it transfered. When it copied to my computer I changed the jpg to avi again, and worked fine. Hope it works for you

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in. At our company we ran into the same “Path is too Deep” error. In searching for countless hours on google I have come to believe that this is MS way of saying “I have no idea what is wrong with your PC.” So its pretty much just a generic hardware failure and you have to run down the line til you find out which piece of hardware is the problem.
So now for the good stuff, here is what our problem was, it may help some of you, (no promises though). Just recently I noticed that 1 of our servers was changed to 100mb full duplex (found out also that this needs to be like this temporarily due to a network assessment) all of the pcs were at Auto. The problem was transferring to that particular server would give the error message, any other server was fine. I changed the PC’s to 10mb Half duplex and they worked just fine, slower than 100 of course but it is our temporary fix until it can be changed back to auto.

Hope this helps someone out there.

Rob

haha get this solution! Plug the pen drive in a different USB port and everything works fine…yea because that makes sense…oh well worked for me

I’m getting the same error trying to copy Ghost image files (~600 megs each) from a Snap server to my desktop PC. I don’t think it’s really a path problem in my case – I created the images in Ghost under DOS, so I would imagine if the path is OK for DOS, it should be OK for Windows. But as someone pointed out, it may be a duplex problem. No way I’m dropping to 10/half though – it’ll take ages to copy over the 5 files. ;)

Got this trying to simply copy a folder from PC to USB drive. Folder itself went, but files inside froze to dreaded “Path…”.

USB port switch did not change anything. However, I then went back to original folder on PC, selected individual files, and they copied to USB drive no problem. extra steps? Workaround?

I had the save problem when copying from/to USB 2.0 flash drive some .avi file with filename less than 8 characters (so the chars are not the problem), i didnt’t had any spaces in the filename too (so putting out spaces isn’t the solution also). I rebooted my windows pc and the file was then succesully copied to USB flash disk. Avi file size was abot 700 MB. Next day the problem occured again, but this time with a compressed .exe file. That was strange, because only thing theta connects theese 2 separate cases was the file size. This particular .exe file was about 350 MB. I guess this is the problem with large files, but who knows, maybe it hapens with small ones too. Didn’t had that problem so far, but you never now what is about to pop up next. By the way, i’m using Windows XP pro, if it’s any help.

Thank you for this solution, I was having problems on word documents only a few kb but changing it down to 10mb half duplex worked a treat.

simple solution…since i just ran into this problem when migrating from one Web Server to another.

ZIP is the key word. if you just ZIP the folder and move it, you have no problems. maintains the same directory structure.

my 2 cents for the day.

Hey guys just thought I’d add what happened to me when I had this error message. I was trying to back up my documents, music, picture and movies etc to an external hard drive. Like many of the other comments here I had no idea what the hell “path is too deep” was ment to mean. Alot of people suggested the file name was too long but this was not the case. Infact I still don’t know what was wrong but I have solved the problem! I took my pc to pc world and go them to back up the files for me onto my hard drive because aparently they have “more advanced methods”. They suposedly changed the format of the external drive from FAT32 to FAT16 which was somthing I had done myself so I’m not sure if this is what solved the problem or not. Of course this did cost me £30 but it alowed me to then format my PC to factory settings without losing my data. I know this is not an ideal solution but it worked for me so it might work for other people :)

I got message copying files but I am copying from NTFS to FAT32 I believe the path name is too long for that file system and the previous post makes me think that is true best 2 out of three answers? tow different computers same USB drive (FAT32)

I ran into this error as well as “network path no longer available” off-and-on when copying files. Taking the lead from DMW’s post we ran diagnostic checks on the new server and found a bad dimm. This is by far my favorite MS error message – pretty much the equivalent of the “check engine” light.

I encountered the same error past few days and preliminary suspected that is due to the cable issue as the hard drive is on portable based. After changed with new cable the issue still remain unchanged. Can anyone tell me is it related to the IDE to USB coverter module board problem. BTW, I plan to purchase new case by today to prevent from corrupted by well condition hard drive… I am nervous the Ficking sound may damage my 60GB hard drive. :)

I’m having the same “the path is too deep” error when transfering mp3s from my desktop to an SD card on my treo, sometimes, here is the catch, if I transfer one file at a time it always works. If I transfer a folder or more than one file it always fails. I have changed USB ports, I have changed file transfer programs on the treo, nothing has helped. Now I am going to delete all of my USB ports in control panel and re-install them to see if that helps. If anyone has suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

If you’re having this problem to or from Win 2k3, especially if it’s over a routed connection i.e. between two different IP ranges, try this MS hotfix. KB913446. Resolved it for me. Think the Windows thinks it’s an attack, even though it’s not.

For those of you getting this error when copying files to/from your hard drive to a USB disk storage device (stick or drive), it is usually an electrical noise problem. “Path Too Deep” is an I/O failure catch-all message that really doesn’t describe the real problem.

To fix this with USB drives, CHANGE THE USB CABLE. You can also try using another USB port, but swapping the USB cable fixed it on two different systems for me.

Well, I had the same problem with my usb mp3 player. The solution I came with that i uninstalled USB drivers from Device Manager, made restart and then everything gone back to normal. Sorry for my poor english. Hope that for some of you out there it will help :)

I have the same problem when trying to copy or move larger “300MB+” files from my local hard disk to a hard disk or flash drive connected via a USB 2 PCI card I have installed.

When I attempt to transfer a larger file I get either the error “file path too deep” or the PC hangs. I have this same issue on two different PCI USB2 cards I have tried “ALI chipset and NEC chipset”. I can however copy the files succesfully via the USB 1.1 ports that are connected directly on the motherboard.

The location I’m copying from and too are both on the root of the drives and have short filenames so there is no problem with the path or filename length.

I’m running Windows XP Home sp2 and have the latest available drivers for the PCI cards installed. If I bring my hard disk caddy into work and copy the same files onto and from my work PC via the motherboard USB 2 ports then all is good, so not an external hardware issue.

Searching the web I have found many people that have reported this fault but none that have clearly ressolved the problem.

If anyone can offer any advice on ressolving this issue it would be gratefully received, as it’s been driving me mad.

Cheers in advance.

Here’s one possible explanation that nobody has mentioned (worked for me anyway):

In my case, the problem was the Windows security that gets added on to a file downloaded from the internet. You know the one: if you download a .exe or .msi file, when you try to run it, Windows (XP at least) tells you whether it carries a publisher’s certificate, and says “are you sure you want to run this file?”

If I attempt to download such a file to a network location, be it a \\unc\path or a mapped drive, I get the “path is too deep” error. I can download it to a local drive but then “the path is too deep” for me to move or copy it from there to the network.

The solution (for me anyway) is to download the file to my computer (e.g. the desktop), then begin to run the file from there. When Windows asks me if I want to run this file, I un-tick the checkbox marked “always ask…” and then click the “yes” button. Then I stop the program at the next available opportunity, and hey presto I can move it!

It’s as if Windows adds some sort of “wrapper” marking the file as a potential threat, and you have to get it to remove the wrapper before the file becomes portable. I would investigate that theory but I’ve already blown a day’s work getting this far…

Hope this helps others like me!

I was getting the same error message this week. Fixed my problem when copying files from my hard drive to a USB storage device (Kingston 1GB) by re-formatting the memory device.

It’s working fine now. I think the problem began because I was copying files to/from a Windows XP computer and to/from an Ubuntu Linux computer and then back again (corrupted file system?).

My main computer has Windows XP Pro.

Hope this helps.

It appears that “path to deep” is another MS generic error message very much like “general protection” and “illegal operation” errors.

When Windows has a problem copying/moving a file(s) to/from network devices (USB and CD/DVD are lumped into this catagory by Windows) this error message is generated.

The solutions you will find out there are those that “worked” for people, but there is no single or simple solution to this problem, because hardware and/or OS problems on all of the computers/devices involved could be the source of the error.

Checking network cables and cards is a good place to start. After that check drive integrity of the source and target drives.

Also slowly failing memory and/or power supply can be the source any problem with Windows.

Slowing down network connections (switching from 100mbs to 10mbs and/or full-duplex to half-duplex) has worked for some people. This could be tracable to cabling, NICs, hubs/routers flaking. I would try switching to 100mbs half-duplex before settling for a 10mbs connection.

Unfortunately MS continues it’s longstanding policy of using gerneric error messages, which are little to no help in diagnosing the actual cause of the problem.

Good Luck solving your particular problem.

I ran into this problem at work where we have four computers hucked to a Netgear FS105 switch and up-linked to an ancient hub. The switch shows the duplex and speed of each link and I’ve always thought it interesting that the uplink was at 10/Half when all the others were 100/Full. Network performance has never been stellar at these machines.
It came to a head the other day when I added a permanent link to the fourth computer (I’ve been having to share). I guess the switch was finally overwhelmed with four fast connections and started dropping stuff. I’ve had applications locking up and “Path is too long” errors for two days and even had to reboot the machine a couple of times.
Setting each machine to 10/Half seems to have done the trick. I just moved the archives I’ve been needing to and printed a document without a hitch.

Hope it helped.

I think that Fred has hit it right on the head. In my situation, I believe the issue is that the switch port for a server is set to Auto-negotiate link speed, while the server is hard-coded to 100MB/Full. We’ve experienced strange network problems in the past when the two ends of a connection are not set correctly.

I haven’t had a chance to confirm yet with the network folks, but I changed the NIC on the server from 100/Full to 100/Half. This resulted in the errors completely disappearing, and also what was taking 20+ minutes trying to copy before (and ending in the error) – just took 5 minutes to complete without issue.

I’m going to have to work with the network team to get the switch and server both set to 100/Full, but for now at least I’m able to continue building the server.

BTW, another error I received in connection with this is ‘The specified network name is no longer available.’

I had this problem when trying to transfer mp3 files to a Sony media player. Turns out the USB port on the front panel of the PC is bad. When I switched to a back panel port the problem disappered. However, I’ved not had any problems with other devices on the front panel. Funny.

This is for the WIRELESS people. I have a PC on wire to a Dlink DI-624 Router and a Wireless Edimax 7728LN in my other desktop. The PC had the same issues as people all over the web. Both msgs pop up, either path too long crap or ’specified network name no longer available’ and sometimes also telling me maybe I don’t have permissions to access the files/folders. All of this is bunk. The following advice is assuming you have set up a WIRED network before and know the basics are correct on your network. Then you add a WIRELESS pc or change one of your wired pc’s to wireless (as I did when I moved…No more cable under the house connecting all rooms and too difficult to do it again in new location…ARGH!) and things suddenly go to crap from PC to PC or perhaps from any wireless PC on a network with a server to any other PC (or server). Note that all other PC transmissions from the wireless PC to the internet or email work fine. I can download gigs all day from the web. Just PC to PC seems affected for me. I turned on WMM/QOS in my DI-624 router and all of these issues were gone. This is purely a WIRELESS RELATED setting. Turning it on in the Dl-624 however, kills the setting for SUPER G MODE. It becomes totally grayed out when clicking WMM/QOS circle/radio button. I couldn’t copy more than a file or two before and now can routinely copy gigs from pc to pc. With LONG filenames, tons of spaces in names etc it all works fine now. Just find this setting in your wireless router (whatever brand, or Access Point – again whatever brand) and turn on WMM/QOS, also have it on in your cards settings. This should end the above errors. As mentioned above by others AUTO on your router or nic settings on the PC suck. ALWAYS tell your parts what to do if possible and match when connecting devices. Such as telling your nic/router to go 100mbit and NOT AUTO (SPD’s suck too…Manually enter memory timings of your RAM! Random note…sorry :)). Of course this is assuming you don’t have a mixed 10/100 network (mostly speaking to home users here…but really, how many networks still have 10mbit pc’s on them?…REPLACE those people! A nic is $10 and all pc’s in the last five years or more should have 100mbit in them anyway).

Oh yeah, The Edimax card is the best N card out there AFAIK. It has the RAlink chipset while all others that I know of don’t. All the others have connection issues, dropping constantly. Get a card with RAlink and you’ll be happy with speed and distance. It never drops the connection and is blazing fast vs. my laptops integrated Intel chipset and also a 2 Dlink G cards I have which were bought because the Intel b/g is crappy. Dlink proved no better. I have two different Dell laptop models here and neither fares any better with integrated b/g or the cards. I’ll be going RAlink for my laptops shortly (Edimax again since it has RAlink also, just as the desktop card does) and eventually an RAlink router to match my N pc’s. Note I’m using an N card to get to a G router as the G cards just couldn’t go the distance. Apparently RAlink has excellent G support :) I’m kinda tired but hopefully everything I said makes sense and helps some of you out. Spread the word, there are tons of people with this problem. I also haven’t had time to check how much WMM/QOS affects performance (sustained throughput I mean). I’m guessing this is a non issue for home use as it wasn’t noticeably slower to me dragging gigs across and I’ve been dragging files across the network for ages…Not to mention being an A+ PC tech in an IT dept with a large network…I’m pretty sure I’d notice. Someone else can benchmark it. I felt posting the solution was more important tonight :) Microsoft isn’t going to help you…LOL. Good luck people. Oh yeah, all PC’s are on XP, not that Vista would change the router issue in this case. I’m not promoting Vista here. I hope it dies.

I hate this problem, and ive seen it in various guises. Copying from PC – External i dont ever remember it happening, but it happens often when copying from that same external to the pc. Ive also seen it while copying from External – External… Its annoying, Basically windows doesnt allow you to back up stuff properly. Possibly there is corruption on the external, but it seems unlikely, as the error seems to be pick and choose, never striking on the same file twice. I hate microsoft… wish i knew how linux worked

I agree with “Fred – December 3, 2007 “.
In my case, I was trying to download WMA audio files to a MP3 player through a USB port. Beside the “file path too deep” error, sometime an error message popped from task bar like “Windows delayed write failed”. I had a Creative CAM on another USB port which caused some problems before. As soon as I removed the CAM, the error disappeared and all transfers went smooth.

My fix – This fix has been mentioned before but just to add gravity to it…

I (windows) zipped (rather than rar’ed) the directory containing the hundreds of files.

Then copied it via windows paste.

I will second (or third) the WinZip fix. Was having this problem copying one way (from W2003 Server to XP Pro) and “network connection no longer available” going the other way. I then zipped 10 directories of about 400MB total, copied and pasted that and it worked fine.

Totally frustrating!! At least I found a way to make it work – thanks to those with there suggestions (of which I have tried many)

I’ve been getting this on and off for a couple years. For the longest time I had a wireless network at the house, and used two networked drives (connected to a Linksys NSLU2) to stream movies and music. So every couple months I would get this “Path is too deep” error when trying to copy video files (avg 750MB) from the desktop to one of the network drives.

I never did solve it with my wireless setup, but about 6 months ago I wired the house with CAT6 and haven’t seen that error since – until yesterday. I found that I could copy files to networked drives, but once one file completed I would get either this “path is too deep” error, or an error saying that the network path is no longer available. After reading this thread, which I found by Googling the error, it reminded me that just recently I set my network adapter’s “Jumbo Frame” setting drom “Disable” to “7KB MTU” to help move video through the pipes quicker. Well, I changed it back to “Disable” and files transferred flawlessly. No errors at all.

Not sure if this is everyone’s solution, but it’s worth checking your network adapter’s advanced settings to see if this is the issue. Regardless, this does seem to be most frequently caused by network adapter settings, whether it’s the connection type or the jumbo frames…

Been fighting it for a week. I took off the “auto” setting on Local Area Connection — Properties — Configure — Advanced — Speed & Duplex and selected 100 MB Full and the file copied in a couple of seconds (versus taking minutes on “Auto Speed & Duplex”.

Thank you MChase! I did change my network card to what you suggested, and tat was just it! Had multiple failures otherwise!

I had this same “path is too deep” error. This is on a home network with an actiontec modem/router. I had 1 pc set for 100/full, the other auto. transfer speeds were slow, and then I’d get this error when copying big/many files. Set the auto pc to 100/full. same problem. Sent them both to auto and voila! it worked. Transfered 7 Gbs of pictures in about 25 minutes.
I see many have posted this info here, but I though i’d second it.

Just had the same problem with no respons when trying to copy “big” files via. network… The “Path is too long” is just a bad MS way to say I don’t know what the beeeeppp is happening. So I tracked it to be a hardware issue, did a reset of my router and then … IT WORKS!!!
Apparently there is no unique solution to the problem only some suggestions as allready mentioned.

“Path too long” or “Pth too deep” error occurs when copying to servers because on windows server editions the file structure is limited to 255 characters; this can be extended by making the folder on the server shared and accessing it via a workstation

Renaming the file worked for me.

Ok, I thought I’d add my two cents here as this has been frustrating me recently. I have both 1GB and 4GB Cruzer Titaniums that I use regularly. When I write files to them while I’m at work I have no problems. However, when I try to write files to them at home (using the same laptop and same USB port(s)!) I can’t write anything larger than a few megabytes before I get either the I/O or path too deep error. The only thing I can think of that would be different is that at work I’m usually connected to a wired LAN while at home I use my wireless LAN. I also have a Vista machine at home that is always on and connected to the WLAN and I’ve experienced the same I/O errors on that machine using both flash devices. I’ve reformatted them using different file systems and have tried just about everything in the above posts that seemed applicable with no success. The funny thing is that I don’t have any problems copying files between the PC and the laptop over the WLAN at home! Because of this, I hadn’t considered the WLAN being a potential cause for file copy issues from PC to Flash drive until now. I’m at work now and am copying file to and from the drives with reckless abandon with no problems. I’ll have to test the WLAN theory when I get home tonight to see if it really is interfering with file copying over USB. I’ll let you know what I find…

After a long series of troubleshooting, it looks like the USB controllers on both machines were simply overtaxed and unable to provide the total amount of current required for the amount of devices attached. All of the USB ports on the Vista machine were populated and one of the devices was a USB WiFi dongle with a high gain antenna – which is why disabling the wireless connection on that machine allowed my USB drives to function properly. On my laptop, (when I’m at home) I have a non-powered USB hub plugged in with several devices attached to that (at work I use a port replicator that actually injects additional current on each USB port). Unplugging the hub allowed my USB drives to function properly on that machine. Looks like the best long-term solution would be to use a powered hub!

Solved this problem today It was a network adapter settings issue. I tried to map deeper effectively shortening the over name length, which did not work. Changing the adapter speed to EXACTLY match the port speed fixed the problem. (100MB Full) . So if you are going crazy because you know that the overall name length is less than 254, check your adapter speed.

Hack

Be sure to change the link speed at the router. It is most likely set to auto as well. Mismatched link speeds across computers can make even the smallest file copy cra-a-a-a-w-w-w-w-w-l

If path is over 260 chars i use this util to delete it, cause windows cannot do that
http://www.abtollc.com/products.aspx

Copying two executable files from local drive D: to 1 GB USB drive E:, root to root, plenty of disk space. The small file (504 KB) was copied, the larger file (2.8 MB) gave the error. Shortened the names, copied the files to another location, created a zip – nothing helped. Turned out that in my case it _was_ a hardware failure – I was using an extension USB cable. After plugging the USB flash memory directly into the computer, the copy went perfectly fine. Interestingly, the same cable seems to be working fine for smaller files.

I had pretty much the same problem.
Basically if I tried to copy a large file from PC to Flash Drive/External HDD I got the error: Path is too deep or Delayed Write Failure.
This annoyed the hell out of me for about a week.
I was just about to rebuild the PC when I thought I would try one more thing. Disconnect the internal USB powered Memory card reader.
Hey presto all is fine agaon and have copied 30gb to my 32gb flash derive with no probs.
Hope this helps someone else.

Just got the error while I had about 5 things plugged into a USB 1.0 drive (4 through a hub without external power), on an 9+ year old computer. (Asking for trouble really). Tried copying one 400mb video from a root folder to another and BAM. Stupid deep path error. I need to do it this way because I move the file to 8GB flash drive to watch it on DVD or main PC (External drive not working on main PC).

I’ve had to dodge so many things to get my 320GB Western Digital External usable. It DOES NOT work on my main computer but works on every single other computer I’ve tried. It will not boot, can’t see it in Device Manager, light stays red when supposed to go green, there’s no plugin for external power and I’m already using a decent cable with 2 USB ends. Got no choice but to trade it, try with big external powered hub, or deal with it the way I am now.

Anyway, my short-term “path is too deep” problem solved, the LONG way. Had to disconnect it all, plug in the external drive, copy from External root to desktop, then disconnect. Plug in flash drive and then copy from desktop to flash drive. All on USB 1.0 FFS. :(

I read all your posts and tried some- What ended up working for me was to unplug the memory stick from my USB 2.0 built into the laptop and plug it into my 1.0 USB hub. Worked fine. @!#$@%@ Computers.

Joe Jaworski – You are da man! I’d been battling this situation for a number of hours. Why oh why didn’t I switch the cables earlier? Because the SD Card reader I’m using is brand new! No excuse I know. I removed the cable and just plugged the reader itself into my USB hub (the cable was just an extension convenience) and BAM!!! Worked right away.

Thanks, Joe. Sure appreciate you.

A few how tos
step 1 get robocopy from the windows 2000 resource kit.

to delete a path that is too deep:
step 2 create a dummy directory (ex.c:\dummyDir).
step 3 from a command prompt (Start–>Run, then type cmd)
type robocopy c:\dummyDir “c:\really really long anoying directory name her” /purge. this will delete every thing in the really anoying directory.

to copy a path to deep:
from a command prompt type robocopy

to move a path too deep, same as above but use the /MOVE switch.

Robocopy is by far one of the most usefull tools I have every worked with.

hope this helps,
Chris

Helpful site and thread here.

I have a subfolder that causes Explorer to crash, and that cannot be opened by any other program, almost certainly because it contains many subfolders with deep paths and long file names. Windows XP won’t even let me rename the folder with a shorter name – just crashes.

Since I can’t recall all the subfolder names, I can’t use Robocopy to copy, move or rename.

Any ideas, such as a disk utility?

It is not a path error issue. It is an I/O timing device issue between hardware. (Comms Issue)

This is not only a network problem… and it has NOTHING to do with path length…

I am trying to copy a file from a USB pocket Hard Drive to my internal drive and I get the error.

The file is in the root on the Pocket Drive and the path I am copying to is d:\GH\

I tried all these – but it was a dodgy usb hub connection – reset it and the usb plug and was able to eliminate this error.

I had the same problem trying to copy a file from a server in one domain, to a server in another domain on the other side of the world, over a VPN.

Zipping the file didn’t help. Mapping a drive and using xcopy from a command prompt worked for me :-)

So no one has an easy hotfix for this problem….. can someone post a step by step for us guys that are still getting the plastic off the XT box and the 1/4 inch floppies…. com’on someone post a simple way to fix this problem and easy for Laymen to do. Please……

setting network adapter from auto to max speed cleared my problem that was through usb to x-drives

As previous post suggested- setting network adapter from auto to max speed cleared my problem that was through usb to external drives.

Mine was the same problem of path too deep, I changed the USB port and now my USB works fine. I think there was a problem in the extension wire I was using.

A NEW USB CABLE FIXED IT FOR ME!!!

ok, so I will put this easy for people who just read the bottom posts. This has been stated throughout, but here goes.

1. This is a generic error message from Microsoft. It can mean anything.
2. If you get this error while transferring files over a network, switch the speeds so that they are the same on the sending and receiving machines. 10baseT with 10baseT or 100 with 100.
3. It could mean that you have a faulty hard drive. Run chkdsk with the /f switch.
4. If it is a problem with a USB drive connected with a cable, it could be a faulty cable. Change it.
5. You might have too many USB devices connected period. If you have hubs connected to hubs and devices in all those, there is not enough power for everything. Pick what you need or unplug everything, move the files, and plug it all back in.
6. You might have bad USB drivers. Uninstall and reinstall them.
7. Finally, and least likely, the file path and name is too long. Shorten it.

If you need instructions on how to do any of this, just scroll up and read the other posts or use the intergoogle.

Hope this helps.

I was having this problem too when copying files from my PC to a Samba share on a Unix host. I changed the network card setting and it resolved it, for me on XP this was:
Start | Settings | Network Connections | right click – Properties | Configure (next to name of network card) | Advanced tab | Link speed & duplex. I changed the value from “Auto detect” to “100Mbps/Full duplex” and now it’s working fine and file transfers are much quicker. The setting name will be different if you have a different brand of network card to me (I’ve got “Intel(R) PRO/100 VM Network Connection”).