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I have a setup with an Apple Time Capsule that I'm trying to access from a Windows computer I installed Airport on.

I can connect fine and everything works fine, until I try to access a folder with an asterisk in it (*) and then Windows will complain with "The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."

Is there a way to get around that? I just want to at least be able to open it, and since it isn't my setup I'm not allowed to go change the folder names since there are other users on Macs who are making use of those names.

Thanks.

Jesse W
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    I don't know for certain that it will work, but I would try accessing it via the 8.3 compliant name. For instance if it is a folder named ThisIsAFolder*WithStar then you might be able to access it with ThisIs~1 – EBGreen Nov 14 '13 at 22:05
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    "dir /x" should give you short names for the files. – ArtemB Nov 14 '13 at 22:34
  • The file/folder names are something like: ***** IMPORTANT FOLDER ****** IMPORTANT FOLDER 2

    I've no clue why they decided it was necessary to add all those *'s at the beginning. But your folder name assumes that the star is in the middle, but in my case it's in the beginning. Would that work anyways?

     – Jesse W Nov 16 '13 at 04:15

1 Answers1

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EDIT NOTE: apparently this \?\ prefix only works for del and rmdir, which does not help with original issue. Bummer.

According to KB320081 this may help you:

del "\\?\C:\My\Directory\file*with*illegal*characters."
ArtemB
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  • since the OP can't even change the folder names, I imagine that deleting them is right out. – EBGreen Nov 14 '13 at 22:50
  • Do you suppose start "title" "\\?\C:\My\Directory\file*with*illegal*characters.txt" would work? I.e., will applications like Notepad and Word be able to handle that style of filename? – Scott - Слава Україні Nov 14 '13 at 23:17
  • Hmm. Microsoft apparently supports this "\?" prefix very selectively. I assumed it would work with commands other than "del", but apparently that's not the case. I've added the note to my attempted answer. FYI, other questions similar to this went unanswered -- http://superuser.com/questions/31587/how-to-force-windows-xp-to-rename-a-file-with-a-special-character – ArtemB Nov 15 '13 at 18:38