Removing Illegal Characters in Win2000 Server

[misle]

I have a Win2k server setup to our photographers to back up there digital images. The only problem is that they use Macs and Macs allow characters that Windows doesn't allow.

Of course they put ~6,000 images on my Server and then started saying, "hey, I can't seem to get the images I put on the server!" I guess Win2k will let them copy illegal names onto the server, but after that the files become worthless without a name change.

Well, 2k isn't being very helpful, because I can manually rename the file names, for example: Coleman, Jim.jpeg -> can rename it to Coleman Jim.jpeg, but I cannot change the name of the Folder in is in, which happens to be named Coleman, Jim.

Any reason I can remove commas and other illegal characters in the file name, but not in the Folder name?

Also, does anyone know of a utility that I can use to automatically change all commas to spaces on my server? Manually editing 6,000 images will not be fun.

Thanks

 

[Bozz]

I've had similar issues where (L)users make extremely long names and the OS accepts it however decides not to allow me to delete it and chkdsk does not fix the problem either.

I've only once had to resort to the low level disk editor found on the w2k resource kit to delete an undeleteable file, all other times i've used the 8.3 generated short name to alter the files

open up cmd, go to the directory using the 8.3 format and delete or rename the files using the 8.3 format. If you dont know what the 8.3 format is, do a

dir /x

that shows the generated short names.

Cheers

 

[Nothinman]

Any reason I can remove commas and other illegal characters in the file name, but not in the Folder name?

A comma is not an illegal character.

 

[volrath]

A period at the end of a folder name is. I also copied files from a mac to my PC, and now have folders that end in a period, which are unopenable, undeletable. When I do dir /x, the filename show as the same as in explorer. When I try to rmdir them, they simply say the file cannot be found. Where can I get a low level file deleter?

 

[Nothinman]

A period at the end of a folder name is. I also copied files from a mac to my PC, and now have folders that end in a period, which are unopenable, undeletable. When I do dir /x, the filename show as the same as in explorer. When I try to rmdir them, they simply say the file cannot be found. Where can I get a low level file deleter?

While MS does tread perios special and a trailing period will cause problems, I had no problems getting the short filename from dir /x and using ren to rename the period off the end, using the short name.

 

[uncleX]

freeware file renamer

and a lot more. search "file rename" on google.

Sometimes putting the name in quotes helps. Like "Program Files"

Years ago I had some illegal file names in DOS. The only way to rename them was to put question marks at the illegal places. Like: ren qxl?rk qxlork

 

[Bozz]

use a wildcard

Lets say you have a directory called "macsucks." and you can't delete it.

try:
-----
ren mac*.* mac
del /Y mac
-----

 

[volrath]

Erm... none of that works for me. There are no 'short names' listed for these folders. They are named "Rob D." "P.O.D." and "T.A.T.U." (eh shut up!). Rmdir does not find them with or without quotes. No matter what wildcard I use with or without quotes, ren gives an improper syntax error. That file renaming software gives me an error when I select these folders. Opening them in windows results in "this folder was moved or removed".

Solution: who can give me a program that will just erase the parent folder and all contents?

 

[Smilin]

You can fool with these names using either the short-name or a syntax that bypasses filename checks:

\\.\driveletter:\path\filename

See:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;120716

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;99361

 

[thirdlegstump]

Argh. I've got similiar problems as well as users using Japanese characters in the filenames. Talk about a nightmare. I've tried installing the Japanese character support but to no avail. Luckily they haven't copied any files to the server yet but they will. What's worse is they don't even add the extentions to the filenames! Argh.

 

[volrath]

I still get file not found using that syntax. I think something is really messed up in my case.