TWEAK: Disable 8dot3 AND strip all your files from 8dot3 names

[hardbag]

disable or not and strip or not, there still is compatibility. for example, on this location registry keys affected by 8.3 are 1000+, but those are all Office14 related and the apps work just fine and have worked just fine.

[Udedenkz]

disable or not and strip or not, there still is compatibility. for example, on this location registry keys affected by 8.3 are 1000+, but those are all Office14 related and the apps work just fine and have worked just fine.

This resembles the XP vs 7 debate.

[HawkMan]

Unless you aren't using 6+ years old programs or devices (pc components do not count) it is safe to strip 8.3.

Before you start giving people more ridiculous advice on tweaks that can break their OS while saving at most a couple of nanoseconds a day you should learn how to use, or rather not use double negatives. It's the second time this thread you've basically said the opposite of what you mea because you're trying to be clever and screw you the double negatives.

[soldier1st]

This tweak can, in certain but rare situations, be helpful but otherwise it is not worth messing with.

hardbag: Provide some actual proof before telling users to change it but if you can't do that then why waste your time?. My advice is to just leave it alone and move on.

[Wakers]

Definitely advise people not to bother with this.

There's a far greater chance that it screws something up than it making any noticeable difference.

Next he'll be telling you to turn superfetch and indexing off.

[hardbag]

Heh. No. And when many of the 7 services are needed, many of them are not, mostly for standalone desktop. Though, fsutil 8dot3name strip does not work without server service. But yes, on a standalone desktop workstation and server services are completely unneeded. Perhaps we should not go into a services discussions :D

[Udedenkz]

So I disabled this and well... nothing changed.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Well the only change you would see, is stuff breaking, so yay?

[Udedenkz]

Well the only change you would see, is stuff breaking, so yay?

Stick with XP if you want legacy compatibility.

[xerces8]

The Vista compatibility was made because everybody was surprised how many installers were 16-bit. Now Vista completely changed how applications are written, no more 16-bit and no more crap code that could execute in XP. Unless you aren't using 6+ years old programs or devices (pc components do not count) it is safe to strip 8.3.

There is a simple reason many installers were 16-bit: They worked.

Don't fix it if it ain't broke.

Yes, it is ridiculous to release 16-bit software in the 21st century, but if it works, nobody will spend time (and money) on "fixing" it.

About "no more 16-bit and no more crap": Oh boy, are you sure you're on the same planet as we? ;)

Last year I used one of the best/most famous/etc... and to top it, actively maintained file management applications and it failed at its core functionality: copying a few files.

There was also a more or less cosmetic GUI glitch in the progress indication making the information about progress of the operation not visible.

The failure was not copying one of the files in the folder I was copying.

Now image how other, less maintained or even abandoned since 5+ years software works?

And yes, people use them, because:

- they still work

- no budget for changes (purchasing a new version, migrating to other software, etc...)

- no alternative software

It is not a perfect world.

Regards,

David

PS: What, still no benchmarks? I guess I have to do it myself... :-p

[theking2]

A simple test:

1) Open regedit

2) search for ~ Look at "Data".

If you find something like for instance "C:\PROGRA~2\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe" /callto:%1" you've most certainly screwed up your system by using the strip command. Also MS-Office is notorious of relying on 8dot3 names.

So no, dont strip (screw) your filesystem. It is a one-way road to disaster.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

While I still think striping the 8.3 filenames will have no performance effect, I did read on Tuxera's NTFS-3G site that disabling it allows the use of normally reserved characters (like \ or ?)

I don't have a setup where I can currently try this, but it'd be interesting to see if the claim is true (for no other reason than to know what's the cause of the restriction)

[seier]

No clue how I could have been so foolish other than I have a backup system. I went on for quite some time using my computer before the negative effects became obvious. Does anyone know of a repair utility that can restore the 8.3 information in Windows (I realize that non microsoft software is probably just fubar). Again, I'd like to concur with everyone who said this was a bad tweak. Among other things I'm enjoying a 50+ minute boot and when I install my Nvidia drivers for my GTX 295 the PhysX, and Nvidia Update portions fail. I'm sure someone could make a highly controlled system that had just the right drivers and application set so as to not fail with the tweak. How are Nvidia's drivers passing WHQL with this 8.3 requirement? Well I have two choices a full reinstall (Pain) or figure out which was my last backup before changing this setting (equal pain). So I guess it'll just be a clean install then, there's always hardware I'm no longer using or am using now since I changed this setting 6-12 months ago.

[Mando]

8.3 is not a 16-bit only thing, it depends on the software or hardware device. Also just because you're running Windows 7 x64 for example, it doesn't mean that you will never need to access those files with an older device or program. Another thing, I had to clean an infection off someone's PC once and the malware used illegal file names to prevent it from being deleted manually. However I was able to delete them from a command prompt using the files' 8.3 names. Now it's true most people probably won't need them, but at the same time there's no reason to go in and start disabling stuff for no reason. It's not going to speed up your system.

Precisely put! Plus If your running W7 x64 theres a good chance your hardware is pretty high spec as it is, resulting in this "tweak" making next to no difference in real world terms. Best leaving as is.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

*yawn*...useless "tweak" is useless....most systems these days have more gigs of RAM and more HDD space, to where you wouldn't even notice a difference anyway...then there's multi threading, multiple cores, etc...I could understand, if say, you were trying to squeeze every drop of performance out of a machine that is rated for XP, but trying to run 7....maybe then, sure, I could see it possibly being relevant....but with specs these days, it just doesn't matter any more....there's bigger fish to fry, so the saying goes.

[Astara]

This is a valid tweak. I have a smallish system -- big enough HD for progs, but my docs go on a server.

Even so, I have 1.5million files on a 750G HD. If I had 8dot3 names enabled, that would about 50% more.

I have disabled 8.3 names on every system since my first WinXP. Never had a problem

The thing is... MS didn't provide a tool to scan for these and remove them until win 7.

More cores doesn't read disk any faster than 1 core, and cpu speeds are about the same today as 10 years ago -- slower in GHz V. P4's..

To the person above who is whining about Nvidia or the person claiming installers use them -- No. They don't unless they are broken. Nvidia doesn't use them. BUT NOTE -- you have to remove the short references from the Registry (you have to convert them to their long-name equiv's BEFORE you delete the on disk ones. Also note -- turning off 8dot3 on your system doesn't get rid of existing ones, so that's a VERY safe option to stop your system from getting worse performance, over time.

FWIW -- the MSutil will scan and tell you whih keys in the registry need to be fixed.

I found saving the reg to a file and fixing them in the file w/a mass-replace text editor, then reading the .reg file back in was much easier than trying to make the changes vi regedit.

Main points:

-- turning off 8dot3 is perfectly safe -- been doing it since XP first came out (along w/turning off last-access time recording).

-- deleting existing 8dot3 names is 99.9% safe *IF* you clean up your registry when you do it. (I say 99.9%, since there may be some some apps that store 8.3 names in some local file instead of using the registry, but I have yet to find such). If this was linux it would be *far* *less* *safe* because linux doesn't have a registry -- a central place where all the configuration information of the computer and user can be stored and updated (Which linux folks often tout as a feature... but this is an example of where it could have downsides).

* (Note, I have had a fair bit of experience in cleaning up paths in my registry, as I was doing it on my home computers when XP first came

out. My home directory on WinXP was '/home/. My documents folder was just 'Documents', not "My documents"... got rid of most of the long names and spaces as they made my life more difficult. I would change them on initial system setup (the longer you wait after setup, the more places you'll have to correct). I did it the same then save each 'hive' to disk in Unicode Reg5 format, then edit the file with 'vim'...)...

For me -- every little tweak is worth it in the long term. ... the big nono on this tweak is NOT cleaining up your reg at the same time you do your

disk. That will cause problems, almost guaranteed.

[HawkMan]

Even so, I have 1.5million files on a 750G HD. If I had 8dot3 names enabled, that would about 50% more.

ugh, groan....

:facepalm:

But enjoy the one nano second a year this tweak will save you. to bad you lose it in the many many minutes you spent doing the tweak in the first place and again with apps that end up looking for stuff they can't find before going to fallbacks.

[corrosive23]

This is a valid tweak. I have a smallish system -- big enough HD for progs, but my docs go on a server.

Even so, I have 1.5million files on a 750G HD. If I had 8dot3 names enabled, that would about 50% more.

I have disabled 8.3 names on every system since my first WinXP. Never had a problem

The thing is... MS didn't provide a tool to scan for these and remove them until win 7.

More cores doesn't read disk any faster than 1 core, and cpu speeds are about the same today as 10 years ago -- slower in GHz V. P4's..

To the person above who is whining about Nvidia or the person claiming installers use them -- No. They don't unless they are broken. Nvidia doesn't use them. BUT NOTE -- you have to remove the short references from the Registry (you have to convert them to their long-name equiv's BEFORE you delete the on disk ones. Also note -- turning off 8dot3 on your system doesn't get rid of existing ones, so that's a VERY safe option to stop your system from getting worse performance, over time.

FWIW -- the MSutil will scan and tell you whih keys in the registry need to be fixed.

I found saving the reg to a file and fixing them in the file w/a mass-replace text editor, then reading the .reg file back in was much easier than trying to make the changes vi regedit.

Main points:

-- turning off 8dot3 is perfectly safe -- been doing it since XP first came out (along w/turning off last-access time recording).

-- deleting existing 8dot3 names is 99.9% safe *IF* you clean up your registry when you do it. (I say 99.9%, since there may be some some apps that store 8.3 names in some local file instead of using the registry, but I have yet to find such). If this was linux it would be *far* *less* *safe* because linux doesn't have a registry -- a central place where all the configuration information of the computer and user can be stored and updated (Which linux folks often tout as a feature... but this is an example of where it could have downsides).

* (Note, I have had a fair bit of experience in cleaning up paths in my registry, as I was doing it on my home computers when XP first came

out. My home directory on WinXP was '/home/. My documents folder was just 'Documents', not "My documents"... got rid of most of the long names and spaces as they made my life more difficult. I would change them on initial system setup (the longer you wait after setup, the more places you'll have to correct). I did it the same then save each 'hive' to disk in Unicode Reg5 format, then edit the file with 'vim'...)...

For me -- every little tweak is worth it in the long term. ... the big nono on this tweak is NOT cleaining up your reg at the same time you do your

disk. That will cause problems, almost guaranteed.

You are so full of verbal diarrhea it's comical.

[123456789A]

Doing this would probably cause compatibility issues with my PCs still running Windows for Workgroups.

[Top Qat]

Ok let me inject some much needed facts into this thread.

First of all you need an up-to-date fsutil reference here http://technet.micro...v=ws.10%29.aspx

Now a little background. NTFS keeps the filenames inside the MFT. http://en.wikipedia....ster_File_Table

The links within the MFT are organised so the long filenames form an index based on a b-tree. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-tree

To find any long filename an efficient algorithm called a binary search (can also be called binary chop) is used.??http://en.wikipedia....earch_algorithm

All very well and good so far. Now the trouble with 8dot3names is that they are not part of any index, they are just another MFT attribute.

To find an 8dot3name requires a sequential search of the MFT records that belong to the relevant directory.

So this could lead to extra disk i/o when:

1) Adding or renaming a file.??A search is required to ensure the new 8dot3name is unique.

2) Finding a file (existing or not) referred to by an 8dot3name.

It is true that even now with 64bit OS like Win7 and 8 some software still uses 8dot3names (shame on you programmers!) and therefore could be problematic in the absence of those 8dot3names.

IMHO the best solution is to disable 8dot3 name creation for all volumes except the system volume. Like this:

fsutil 8dot3name set 3

and then use fsutil strip on all non-system volumes.

So this way it covers your media libraries (or whatever) that is kept elsewhere not on the system volume.

This also means that those misbehaved installers are ok because they will generally use %temp% which is normally back on the system volume.

Um well hope that was clear.

Tim

[Raa]

Is there any reason this topic has been kept going for nearly 2 years?

Don't perform this tweak, Windows knows what it's doing. Leave the filesystem alone.

End of thread!