"the system cannot find the file specified" due to illegal characters

[maxonemillionone]

Ver. 2.0.4

The topic is rather self explanatory. Either there are files within or the folder is named with, an illegal character causing windows XP to freak out and stop handling the file. Whats worse is I cannot rename, delete, or edit the file with a hex editor to fix the problem unless I boot one of my Linux Distro's.

[Ultima]

Hm. Do you know which character is the problem? Or do you have a sample torrent for us to test?

[maxonemillionone]

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4625352/Fukkk_Offf_Discography_-_All_Vinyl__Mixes___Remixes

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5511221/VA_-_The_Best_Of_Electro-House_Collection_2010_vol.1_%5Bmp3_320%5D

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5410006/VA_-_Electro-House_Collection_2010_vol.3_%5Bmp3_320_kbps%5D

All three of the above contain malformed file names or paths which have caused this error for me. Alas, I seem to be plagued by question marks in particular.

[moogly]

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4625352/Fukkk_Offf_Discography_-_All_Vinyl__Mixes___Remixes

I tested this torrent. I downloaded it completely with µT 2.0.4 under Vista SP2, no issue.

I'm able to open each MP3 into WMP from µT and still no issue.

The .torrent file is not broken, I have been able to open it with µT, BEncode Editor (http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=31306) and http://torrenteditor.com/.

Maybe an issue with your Win XP...

[Ultima]

What filesystem are you using? Any particular Windows language setting?

[maxonemillionone]

NTFS, XP Service Pack 3, English. It must be a setting within the OS that is allowing this to happen... Damn.

EDIT: Pardon me, but you guys are fawkin awesome. That was the quickest tech support response I have ever been given. <3

[Ultima]

Hm, it certainly works under Windows 7 here. Testing on Windows XP now... Tested Windows XP w/ SP3, English, NTFS, and no problems either.

Question... are you certain the problem isn't that the resulting full file paths are too long? Windows has problems with paths that are longer than ~256 characters (or is it bytes?) in length.

[moogly]

Some files have a truncated name in the torrent, anyway they are complete and work fine.

Ex.:

[Digital Download]/03 DJ Dan - Seduction (FUKKK OFFF Re.mp3
Rave Is King Remixes [12_ Vinyl - CCM037/01 A1 Rave Is King (Zodiac Cartel Mi.mp3
Sous Acides Club [12_ Vinyl - DGAFAU003]/A1 Suicide Club - Sous Acides Club (.mp3

[Ultima]

Yeah, the truncated names aren't an issue. What was more worrying to me was that there are non-printable characters in some of the path names. Example?

Search using RegEx for [^\w\s\\/\`\'\,\.\[\]\(\)\-\_\&\:] on the first torrent, for example. You'll find that it matches "B1 Monosurround - Cocked Locked Re.mp3", which looks innocent enough until you look at it in hex format and notice 20 2D 20 EF BB BF 43. There seem to be 3 "extra" bytes in between the " - " and the "C".

I kinda assumed µTorrent didn't handle it because I didn't feel like testing, but I caved, tried it, and had no problems on this file. So it really looks like it just might be a path length issue (can't really see any other obvious explanation).

[maxonemillionone]

Hmmm. Well the problem may lie in the partition I am saving the files to. I am using an EXT2/3 IFS to save to my external HDD. Thats where all of my music is/torrent download destination.

[Ultima]

And what of the path lengths? Do they get very long (due to highly nested directory structures, or something)?

[maxonemillionone]

And what of the path lengths? Do they get very long (due to highly nested directory structures, or something)?

They are one directory away from root, in a folder, aptly named Music.... I appreciate all the help guys but I think a fresh scoop of vanilla will solve all of these problems. Whether XP or 7 I have yet to decide.

[moogly]

Win 7, definitely.

[maxonemillionone]

So I did a vanilla install of Win 7 I thought it would solve my problems... It hasn't for the most part.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5410006/VA_-_Electro-House_Collection_2010_vol.3_%5Bmp3_320_kbps%5D

This torrent file is giving me the same error. My idea is I don't have a necessary language pack installed and thus is giving illegal character errors.

[paintball9]

I just downloaded that torrent as well, No problems here. (win 7 x64) And my current install is an absolute disaster. (faults all over the place and can't uninstall anything) The only reason I'm not reinstalling right now is I'm waiting on some seeding to finish first.

[paintball9]

Was just gonna go test out the other ones, but apparently thepiratebay is down.

[Ultima]

@maxonemillionone: It shouldn't be a language pack issue. Windows supports Unicode in its internal subsystems, which is really all that should be needed for these filenames to work. Language packs only change the user interface language -- nothing more.

Given that the only major difference here between us and you is that you're downloading to that Ext2/3 IFS, I'm guessing that may be the problem after all. Have you tried downloading to a native NTFS drive to see if the problem persists?