In-Reply-To: <OFADFDE497.D1849058-ONC1256B51.002E7352@abnamro.com> Several reply's on this posting revealed the following additional information on this behaviour. Possible Reason/Explination: There are several API's one can use when accessing file-systems. Of these API's there are ANSI-versions, where filenames might be limited to MAX_PATH characters, and UniCode-versions where filenames can take up to 32.000 characters. For reference: check the info on the CreateFile() function: >>Windows NT/2000/XP: In the ANSI version of this function, the name is >>limited to MAX_PATH characters. To extend this limit to nearly 32,000 >>wide characters, call the Unicode version of the function and prepend >> "\\?\" to the path. For more information, see File Name Conventions. BTW, The Fine Manual can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en- us/fileio/filesio_7wmd.asp?frame=true It seems that the source of this behaviour lies within the backwards-compatablity to "provide" (Microsoft) and "use" (several vendors) the ANSI-versions of these API-functions. Possible solitions: - change the application to use the Unicode-version of the API's. This may cause an application to loose its backwards compatability to Windows9x/ME. This is a issue for each vendor of the vunerable application. - change the ANSI-version of the API (if possible). This may cause other applications to react differently, since the expect the return/output of the old/current version. This is a issue for Microsoft. Vunerability report: The following applications have been reported as unable to access a path that exceeds the normal limitation. The list is far from complete and serves just as a general guide. ----------------------------------- ---------------------------------- ---------- Platform Application ----------------------------------- ---------------------------------- ---------- Vunerable: ---------- NT4 Explorer.exe, CMD.exe Windows2000 Explorer.exe, CMD.exe WindowsXP Explorer.exe, CMD.exe NT4 SP6a Mc Afee V4.5.1 SP1 with Engine 4.160 Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP2 AntiVirus eXpert Professional ver 5.9.3 Windows NT 4.0 SP4 Norton AntiVirus 5.0 Windows NT 4.0 SP6a Norton AntiVirus 7.5.1 *1 Norton Antivirus Corporate 7.60.926 Windows 2000 Professional SP2 Norton Antivirus 8.00.58 Windows XP Pro Norton Antivirus 8.00.58 *1 Legato Networker 6.1.1 Not Vunerable: -------------- *1 Sophos Anti-Virus v3.53 Win2000 SP2 Sophos AV, January edition (Engine build 2.7) NT4 NTBACKUP.EXE Win2000 NTBACKUP.EXE NT4 Seagate BackupExec 6.11 NT4 Veritas BackupExec 8.6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- *1 = Platform used when checking the given application was not reported. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
