100 folders maximum in root?

[jferrante]

Hello all,

I’ve got a customer with 100 folders in his root directory of c drive. If he creates another, he cannot view the folders any longer in the right hand pane of explorer. When he deletes 1 or more folders, the view is normal again.

Any ideas on this? This is an XP Pro sp2 system, about 2 years old. Hard drive space is not an issue with over 50gigs free.

Explorer is also showing several folders with tilde characters.

This computer was set up originally with Windows XP Pro, not an upgrade install. Office 2003 is installed, but not much else.

Thanks...

Jeff

 

[bcastner]

FAT12 and FAT16 filestores have a limit of 512 entries in the root; FAT32 has no restrictions. NTFS has no restrictions.

But see, if NTFS: thread779-1270779

 

[jferrante]

I will follow the directions in the thread you quoted. I generally use Diskeeper to defrag the MFT and also "pad" it. I believe this workstation has Diskeeper 9 installed on it.

If this system is running XP Pro, SP2 with NTFS, I still don't understand the 100 folder limit. (if there is such a thing.)

I have learned over the years to always trust anything bcastner has to say, so I'll do it and report back.

 

[bcastner]

If this system is running XP Pro, SP2 with NTFS, I still don't understand the 100 folder limit. (if there is such a thing.)

There must be some other issue as NTFS does not have a limit for the root.

Q1: Can the Sysinternals DiskVIew successfully read each of the folders/files? (Focus on the folders/files with "~" in the name)

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/DiskView.html

Q2: Does your Antivirus program have the capability of scanning for Rootkits?

 

[linney]

Have you run ChkDsk /r on this drive? Disk Cleanup and a good old Defrag?

 

[jferrante]

First, my original post was wrong. The view in the right hand pane is normal. The left pane shows all drives and partitions, but there is no + in front of C. You cannot expand c: in the left pane. All functions are normal in the right side. The computer functions normally in all other ways.

I've done all that was suggested by bcastner and the problem persists, but I did find the culprit.

The user is opening explorer.exe with optional switches in properties. If plain explorer.exe is run, all is normal. If explorer.exe is started with this set of switches:

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n,/e,c:\

Then we have the problem. Apparantly this is causing the 100 folder limit somehow. With 100 folders or less showing, all views are normal. When you add any folders over 100 the + sign dissappears from in front of the drive letter, in this case C:\ This is an inconcenience, not a major problem, but I too use those switches in my explorer properties for convenience sake.

Google returns many threads on various switches that can be used, but no mention of any directory or folder limit when done this way. I'm still searching and reading.

Any and all tips are appreciated. Thanks again in advance.

 

[bcastner]

The /n and the /e switches are contradictory.

/n == single pane view
/e == traditional double pane view, starts at root of object

All you want is:

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,C:\

 

[jferrante]

I respectfully disagree. The view generated from

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,C:\

Is dramatically different than this:

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n,/e,c:\


I'm still trying to find out why the 100 folder limit???

 

[bcastner]

I am sure it is different.

But, the /n and the /e switches are contradictory. See:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307856&sd=tech

If you want to specify the number of panes:

Two panels:
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /e,c:\

One panel:
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n,c:\

Because two panels is the default, this is the same as the two panels selection above:
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,c:\