Apparently there is a bug in how Vista handles long file names, and it can easily be reproduced. When I download files from Microsoft Update Catalog, the file names of the files that are downloaded are very long, but still not that long. The files are saved to the NTFS formatted hard drive and I can use Windows built-in function to compress the files to a zip file. So far so good, the problems arise when I want to extract the compressed files, where Vista then says that the filename is too long for the file system to handle. This makes me wonder how I could first save the file to my computer, then zip it, but now I am not allowed to extract it? Strange to say the least!
Category: Copying files
Should it really take 134 years to copy a file?
During the day I’ve been working on creating an integrated installation CD for Vista x64 with all the drivers and patches. Copying the file install.wim from the Vista DVD to the hard drive would take around 49000 days to complete, which is equal to 134 years (!), according to Vista. Probably this is a bug in the function that calculates the remaining time, and probably this is fixed in Vista Service Pack 1, or perhaps even in the couple of performance and reliability fixes that has been launched recently. Although the below screenshot is in Swedish I can tell you that “dagar” = “days” in English.