Hello,

I put a desktop shortcut to a website on my desktop without realizing that the title's length would prohibit me from deleting it! When I try to delete it, I get the following error message:
Cannot delete file: The filename you specified is invalid or too long. Specify a different file name."

When I try to rename it a shorter name, I get the following error message:
"Error Renaming File or Folder
Cannot rename file: The filename you specified is invalid or too long. Specify a different file name."

How do I get rid of this thing? I'm definitely going to contact the company and tell them that they unwittingly drive potential customers crazy with this!

Thanks in advance for your time,

apilling

Do you have the site open while you are trying to do this as it may not allow any changes when the site is open. Probably the easiest would be boot into safe mode and delete it from there.

Thanks for the speedy response, Tassie. I have been trying to erase or delete the shortcut with the site closed. I will try what you suggested, BUT I have to ask an embarrassingly rudimentary question first... How do I boot up in safe mode? I hate to admit it, but I am too deficient in computer geekiness to know how to do this. I am sufficiently geeky in many other ways, though.

I tried to get into safe mode when I started up last time. I entered a mysteriously DOS-looking world and wandered around various screens, but I couldn't find a way to get into safe mode from there. How do I get there?

Thanks again in advance,

apilling

If the computer is running, shut down Windows, and then turn off the power.
Wait 30 seconds, and then turn the computer on.
When you see the black-and-white Starting Windows bar at the bottom of the screen, start tapping the F8 key. The Windows 2000 Advanced Options Menu appears.
Ensure that the Safe mode option is selected. In most cases, it is the first item in the list and is selected by default. (If it is not selected, use the arrow keys to select it.)
Press Enter. The computer then begins to start in Safe mode. This can take a few minutes.
When you are finished with all troubleshooting, close all programs and restart the computer as you normally would.

I have the same problem that Apilling had, I am running Windows98SE and tried to delete the desktop shortcut in Safe Mode and it would not allow me to delete the shortcut.Has anyone got any other ways of getting rid of it?
Thanks.

Okay, I just had this issue after extracting a couple of files into a deeply nested directory within my documents....
What it is, is the MAXPATH has been exceeded... the easiest way round this (for your issue with files on the desktop) is to rename folder names in earlier directories, thus hopefully getting to a short enough file and path name to remove the silly file!
i.e. the file at the moment may be something like "c:\documents and settings\username\desktop\silly long filename which messes everything up.something"
So the key is to rename things like your username to single letters to reduce the length of the path.. if that doesn't reduce it by enough, you then have to go hardcore and rename system directory names, i.e. start>run>cmd
Then without quotes "ren Desktop d"... this renames a system directory to d, so when you go to the desktop all your links will have disappeared... you then need to go to my computer and navigate to the directory c:\documents and settings\username\d" and see if you can delete the file then... after completing that, you may want to restore your desktop directory back... this is done by using the same method... start>run>cmd "ren d Desktop".

Best way to delete a file where the name is too long for tired old windows to delete.

Run command (Click start, run, cmd).
Go to the folder the file you want to delete. Something like "cd c:/somewhere"

Figure out what the first few letters are or as many letters you need to make that file unique and type in
del "uniquename"*

Example:

Folders File list:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwx yzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.exe
abc.exe
abcd.exe

You want to delete the long one and only the long one, so type
del "abcdef"*

And Poof, its gone... Hope that helps.

P.S. I only explained using the unique start of the name so that I don't get blamed for people accidently deleting a bunch of files they needed.

Sincerely,
Dave Schlaegel

Originally Posted by apilling

Hello,

I put a desktop shortcut to a website on my desktop without realizing that the title's length would prohibit me from deleting it! When I try to delete it, I get the following error message:
Cannot delete file: The filename you specified is invalid or too long. Specify a different file name."

When I try to rename it a shorter name, I get the following error message:
"Error Renaming File or Folder
Cannot rename file: The filename you specified is invalid or too long. Specify a different file name."

How do I get rid of this thing? I'm definitely going to contact the company and tell them that they unwittingly drive potential customers crazy with this!

Thanks in advance for your time,

apilling

This thread is from June 2006. Thread closed.