File stuck with location \\?\C:\Users\.....

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File stuck with location \\?\C:\Users\.....

dinners 21

I have a file stuck on my desktop which I can't move/rename/copy/delete.... When I look at the file location I see something has obviously gone wrong as the location is \?\C:\Users\username\Desktop

Is there anything I can do to recover the file to a usable state. It's an image and will open in some image programs but not all. Once open I can't even "Save As".

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MotoX80 37,161

The \?\C:\ notation just tells the Windows file system to bypass some string parsing.

If you are seeing a "file location", then that sounds like you are not looking at the file itself, but a shortcut to an image file. Don't open the link, navigate to the image itself and open it. Or just remove the "\?\" part.

There should be no problem using "\?\" to reference a file, so I suspect that you have something else going on. You don't say what error messages you get, so if you still have a problem I would recommend that you share a screen image of what you are doing.

dinners 21 Reputation points

2022-11-23T18:19:01.687+00:00

Hi, I've added a screenshot of what the properties page looks like. I definitely saved it to the desktop in the first instance, so it shouldn't be a shortcut (it also doesn't have the shortcut icon).
I don't get any error messages. When I try and rename it, nothing happens and it just keeps the current name. Likewise if I try and move, copy or delete it, the actions just doesn't happen and there is no error.
MotoX80 37,161 Reputation points

2022-11-23T23:41:20.627+00:00
Forum users have no idea what is going on with your PC.

Run a Defender full scan and also an MRT scan to verify that there is no malware on your pc.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=windows%20mrt%20scan

Open a command prompt with "run as administrator" and CD to the desktop. Then try to do the rename. Post the output.

Update What do these commands show?

dir *D0.jpg attrib *D0.jpg icacls *D0.jpg
dinners 21 Reputation points

2022-11-24T23:11:28.827+00:00

I'm glad it's not just me!

I have set the Defender scan going and will run MRT after and provide an update. Please see below a screenshot of the resutls of the commands.

As you can see the filename is long.. however I checked and it's under 260 characters (255 including the file extension) but in any case I tried changing the LongPathsEnabled setting to '1' in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem and still no luck doing anything with the file.
MotoX80 37,161 Reputation points

2022-11-24T23:42:41.06+00:00

Run "dir /x" and see if it has an 8.3 name. Try renaming it using that.
dinners 21 Reputation points

2022-11-26T02:46:32.59+00:00

dir /x just have the full filename, however I tried renaming it from within Administrator command prompt with the full filename and it worked - didn't think of trying that! Can now use the file as normal and the properties no longer has \?\ at the start... many thanks!

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File stuck with location \\?\C:\Users\.....

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