Long File Names Information Gathering

File paths beyond 255 characters can cause problems with backup tools, migrations, and some older applications that don’t support Windows’ extended path limits — and tracking down exactly which files are the culprit across a large file share is tedious to do manually.

Using TLPD

TLPD is a small free command-line utility (available from SourceForge) built specifically for this — it scans a path and reports every file whose full path exceeds a length you specify.

1. Download the standalone tlpd.exe and place it somewhere convenient.
2. Open an elevated Command Prompt and browse to that folder.
3. Run:

   tlpd.exe "D:\PathToScan" 255

The first argument is the path to scan (map a network drive first if you need to scan a UNC path), and the second is the character-length threshold — 255 in this example, but you can raise or lower it depending on what you’re checking for. Once the scan finishes, check %temp%\TLPD-log.txt for the full list of offending files and their path lengths, which you can then use to plan renames, restructuring, or exclusions before a migration or backup job.

Windows’ Built-In Long Path Support (Updated for 2026)

Alongside a scanning tool like TLPD, Windows itself has had a built-in way to work around the classic 260-character MAX_PATH limit since Windows 10 version 1607, and it’s still the current, officially supported mechanism in 2026 — unchanged on Windows 10 and Windows 11 (24H2/25H2). It’s controlled by the LongPathsEnabled DWORD:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
LongPathsEnabled (DWORD) = 1

or via Group Policy at Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Filesystem > Enable Win32 long paths (also available as an Intune Policy CSP for managed devices). The important caveat Microsoft still documents: enabling this setting does not automatically fix every application. It only helps software that has been specifically built to declare itself “long path aware” in its manifest — unmodified legacy applications will still hit the same 260-character wall regardless of the setting. That’s exactly why a scan-and-report tool like TLPD remains useful even with this enabled — it tells you which specific files and paths are still a problem for the tools you actually use, rather than assuming the registry change alone has solved it.

Resources

• Sourceforge
• guide