Corruption of File Names

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom Ryan
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Tom Ryan

I'm new to PC's and XP. In the last week or so I've noticed that most of my
files have undergone a name change. For example: In a folder Home resides
a file Lasagna Recipe. The file now is called LASGN~1. Some times it's at
the folder level: a folder Phone Numbers has been changed to PHONEN~1.

The files are fine. All types of files have been affected, but not every
one. I usually work off a jump drive and then back up to the hard drive.
I'm probably going to have to go through the files and rename them all
(there are hundreds), but I'd like to know what's going on.

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Tom said:
I'm new to PC's and XP. In the last week or so I've noticed that most
of my files have undergone a name change. For example: In a folder
Home resides a file Lasagna Recipe. The file now is called LASGN~1. Some
times it's at the folder level: a folder Phone Numbers has been
changed to PHONEN~1.
The files are fine. All types of files have been affected, but not
every one. I usually work off a jump drive and then back up to the
hard drive. I'm probably going to have to go through the files and
rename them all (there are hundreds), but I'd like to know what's
going on.
Click to expand...

Tom,
Those are the DOS convention formats for filenames - the name part can only
have 8 characters, so it changes them to the first 6 letters (throwing out
spaces at the same time) of the filename and then adds "~n" where "n" = 1,
2, 3, and so on in case more than one name starts with the same 6
characters.
Something, somewhere, cannot manage Window's "long" filenames and so is
renaming the files to something it can handle. If files you create on the
local hard drive are OK, and only ones from the jump drive are renamed, then
it's probably the jumpdrive or its drivers doing it. If it's operating at
the DOS level, that would explain it. DOS can't use long filenames; only
the 8.3 format.

HTH

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