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jwedding
Contributor
Contributor

Shortening UNC Path Names in VMWare

I'm running W7 on Fusion 3.01, working in software QA. I keep running into a problem where W7 converts my drive mapping (M:\SWL) to a UNC path (
vmware-host\Shared Folders\SWL)

Under normal conditions, I don't think this would cause a problem, but I'm installing software with very deep folder structure, and as the installer attempts to pull from the shared folder, it fails on some of the longer paths, claiming files cannot be found even though they are present and even browsable within the W7 environment. Our crack install team tells me it's something in our code related to a 256-character path, but cannot offer a fix on that end.

Is there any way to make the UNC name shorter or the mapping stick? I'm pretty sure I just need a few letters, but this is really killing my work right now.

Thanks for any inisight you can offer!

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rcardona2k
Immortal
Immortal

Are you sure your mapping is reverting to a UNC path, i.e. as logged in the installer or product log files. If so that would appear to be a bug in the installer on Windows 7. The reason I ask is because the Win7 explorer shows a canonical UNC address in location bar but the underlying mapping is unchanged.

As to the name, the VMware HGFS driver keys off the vmware-host name, so that's unchangable, I'm not sure if the string "Shared Folders" is localized where the resource name can be edited. The rest of the path is in your control. You could even try mapping another letter further down the hierarchy, e.g. N:\ maps to
vmware-host\Shared Folders\SWL\map\to\a\deeper\folder.

At least open up a defect on the 256 character limit, that's way too limited for 2010. (joke: the 80s called and want 8.3 character names too.)

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