In one of my article’s comments section, I’ve been suffering from semi-automated spam advertising “Long Path Tool”. It’s a tool that can be used to create symlinks for files located deep in folder structure – a simple use case with a lot of free tools available to resolve the same issue, and all of them work just fine and contain the same value proposal.
I guess this is the reason why the developers have had to resort to shady practices to advertise their solution.
It’s unfortunate, but that happens when you choose a crowded a niche.
A recent spammy bot comment left on my blog prompted me to actually review the tool they’re offering, and share my experiences with the readers.
Why review a tool like this?
An example of such bot comment would be this:
You can use the long path tool for this issue.
“Mark Lee”, a bot written in Python running in someone’s mother’s basement
In using the long path tool you just have to click on the long path tool application icon and the tool will provide you a window that contains all your files. You have now the capability to move, delete rename and modify your files without getting error messages. It is a user friendly tool and it is a quick fix for this issue.
Some months ago, I responded to one of these bot comments like this:
Back when I first published this post, I started getting hundreds of spammy comments linking and mentioning to said tool. Likely, every single one of them were left by robots. “Long path tool” is the reason why I had to waste a few hours of my life finding a better tool to curb the constant spam. I ended up finding one, configuring it, and leaving it on – only to find out 6 months later by someone contacting me on Twitter, that it was way, WAY too strict: it was blocking 90% of legitimate comments as well. I had to embark on another journey to find a good comment moderation tool.
Well, eventually I did find a pretty good solution – but not before wasting more time.
Long path tool caused me and the readers of this blog plenty of trouble, it has the most annoying marketing strategy ever, and despite their mentions of free version, it’s a paid tool. Also, for this particular instance, it’s absolutely unnecessary. The issue can be easily solved without paying anything to these bad-mannered spammers.
And if this spam keeps going, I will download the tool, dissect it’s doings, and write a (likely scathing) review, and do whatever I can to be ranked as first result for anyone searching for “Long Path tool review”. Please stop the spam and shady practices and learn to market properly!
Fixing error: “The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.”
Why did I get so tilted by this continuous, but minor nuisance? Well, it directly takes away time I could dedicate on community activities!
I think we all dislike spam, but for someone maintaining a website, it’s a special kind of an issue. One needs to respond to comments fairly quickly to maintain conversations – so you need to monitor the comments section pretty closely. I even made the 2020 resolution to respond to comments in less than a week – so I’m keeping a closer look on the comments than ever before!
Any spam coming in is added extra noise and dealing with it takes time from doing other stuff, like writing new blog posts.
What does it look like, then? Well, it took me some time to set up a good configuration, but now I have a couple of layers of spam-filtering enabled. The biggest barrier is Akismet – and below you can see their stats for the last 12 months. A bad month spam-wise might mean 1300 spam comments stopped by Akismet, some 10 non-flagged spam messages (like the ones Long Path Tool posts), a few false positives (you need to monitor your Spam-folder too!) and of course dozens of actual, real comments.
It can get busy, and you don’t want more spam if you can avoid it!
Anyway, after my reply, the spamming stopped for a while (probably due to chance – I really don’t think they monitor replies to their spam messages), but started again a while ago. So here goes my review, as promised.
Is this post petty? Perhaps, but it’s not for nothing – I’m trying to make everyone googling for “Long Path Tool” a service here.
What’s the “Long Path Tool” anyway?
The tool is developed by a small software studio called KrojamSoft. They claim to be located in San Jose, California, and they offer a number of other tools – likely with similarly annoying earning methods.
Windows Report posted a short article about the tool, and the controversies surrounding it. And there have been a few – see below:
Is Long Path Tool safe?
This program has been in the center of a number of controversies. It has allegations against it ranging from spamming on other sites to putting a file on your computer that you’ll be unable to delete it until you buy a license for their program.Spamming allegations
There have been a number of reports from users that the owners of Long Path Tool have been spamming their sites and promoting their own tool. Some complaints have surfaced on MyWOT (A site that checks the safety and integrity of websites). A user by the name Victorspin has commented, “These clowns have an ongoing campaign spamming a software website. Update: a year later and we’re still getting spammed. So annoying.”Is Long Path Tool harmful?
The complaints don’t end with them promoting their site by spamming. There also have been users reporting that they only let you use the trial for their program for a test. This test consists of the program creating a super long path that you can’t delete it with normal methods. You may have guessed it, the only way to delete that path is by buying a license to their program. While it may be true that it is technically not a virus or a malware, but I think that we can all agree that if the claims are true, this marketing behavior is unethical and unacceptable.At the end, the evidence isn’t conclusive to say it is a malicious software for certain. The complaints aren’t so widespread to pass a judgment on it once and for all. We even contacted their customer support to get a statement concerning the allegations, but they didn’t provide any explanations, only claiming that those allegations against them were ‘unfair‘. Do you think the risks are worth it? Is the price worth it? In the rest of this article, we’ll list a couple of free alternatives to Long Path Tool, so you can avoid this software if you want.
https://windowsreport.com/long-path-tool-alternative/
So there are allegations… But what’s the truth?
We already know, that KrojamSoft engages in shady marketing practices. Spamming is also very impolite – but how shady exactly are they?
The creators even posted a “review” of their own tool, on a blog that’s created under their own, commercial website. That’s just… Really awkward.
If you read a positive review somewhere online for the tool, it’s probably written by the authors of the tool. I had a screenshot shared below, but the site in question actually cleaned the fake reviews, and I didn’t want to keep them either.
But as if spamming other websites wasn’t enough, they’re even spamming people on Twitter:
The developers claim their tool can resolve the following errors – and I suppose these are also the different keywords their bots look for when they’re looking for sites (like mine) where they could spam their tool in the comments section (apologies for the long-ish list):
- Path too long
- Filename too long
- Path too deep
- Destination path too long
- Error 1320 the specified path is too long
- Error cannot delete file: cannot read from source file or disk
- File cannot be copied
- Cannot delete file: Access is denied
- There has been a sharing violation
- Cannot delete file or folder The file name you specified is not valid or too long. Specify a different file name
- The source or destination file may be in use
- The file is in use by another program or user
- Error Deleting File or Folder
- Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use
- Error Copying File or Folder
- Dropbox path too long
- Cannot remove folder
- The filename or extension is too long
- Could not find this item
- Filename is not valid
- The file could not be accessed
- We can’t sync this item because the path is too long
- Onedrive path too long
- Windows Delete Path Too Long
- Source Path Too Long Delete
- Sabnzbd path too long
- The specified path file name or both are too long
- Path too long – aborting (error code 80/1)
- 0x80010135 Path too long
- The system cannot find the path specified winrar error
- Winrar 260 character limit
- The file name(s) would be too long for the destination folder. You can shorten the file name and try again, or try a location that has a shorter path
- Winrar total path and filename must not exceed
- Powershell path too long
- File path too long
- Ue4 couldn’t save package filename is too long
- Sharepoint the filename you specified is not valid or too long
- Cant delete file path name is too long
- Total path and filename length must not exceed 260 characters
- Path too long installer unable to modify path
- The path is too long after being fully qualified
- Microsoft.windowsazure.targets path too long
- The specified file or folder name is too long. The URL path for all files and folders must be 260 characters or less (and no more than 128 characters for any single file or folder name in the URL). Please type a shorter file or folder name
- The path you entered, is too long. Enter a shorter path
- DraftSight installation error 1320
- The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters
- File Name could not be found. Check the spelling of the filename, and verify that the file location is correct
A lot of these errors are clearly not related to long paths at all – and while some of them (such as “Filename is not valid” or “Error cannot delete file: cannot read from source file or disk”) could be, they’re casting a terribly wide net for their spamming efforts here.
Ok, so they’re spammy. Ok, so they’re scammy. But now comes the important question:
Does Long Path Tool work?
After downloading it? No. No it doesn’t, really.
What nobody in the spam comments or paid reviews says is that while most of its competitors are free, Long Path Tool is actually a commercial, paid software.
I mean, it’s terribly amateurish, but still commercial nonetheless.
Actually, even the longpathtool.com website doesn’t say it’s a paid tool at first, but rather it’s a “Free Download”.
Okay. I’ll give them that. The download is free, the tool just doesn’t do anything without you paying at least $40.
After you pay, it might actually do what it says. But it’s a shady program developed by untrustworthy-appearing people, and you have to pay for the tool while there are better, mostly free alternatives. I really don’t think it’s worth it.
Long Path Tool alternatives
Please don’t pay people with such questionable business practices. Instead, opt for one of the free options below (none of which I have any affiliation with):
Create Symlinks
Depending on what you’re doing, a lot of the time creating a symbolic link to shorten the path will help you out. Windows comes with a tool called mklink that can be used for that – see an example below:
mklink /D Source TargetAnd a more practical case:
Let’s say you have a program that needs to open a file – but that file is located really deep in a folder structure, and you can not move it anywhere. An example of that would be a file on a SharePoint modern team site, synchronized by OneDrive for Business. However, your program can’t understand a path that’s over 260 characters.
When this happens, you can just create a symbolic link that points from C:\yourlegacyappwantsthisfolder to C:\Users\Your Epic User Name\Your Organizations Unfortunately Very Long Name\Your Great Team Site That You Named Too Long – Documents\Solutions\Your Best Project Ever\Visual Studio Projects\Your.Awesome.Solution\Your.Awesome.Project.DataAccess\bin\Release\netcoreapp3.0\… you catch my drift.
And maybe the file is locked by a process so you can’t even copy it anywhere.
In a situation like this, you should be able to run something like this:
mklink "C:\yourlegacyappwantsthisfolder" "C:\Users\Your Epic User Name\Your Organizations Unfortunately Very Long Name\Your Great Team Site That You Named Too Long - Documents\Solutions\Your Best Project Ever\Visual Studio Projects\Your.Awesome.Solution\Your.Awesome.Project.DataAccess\bin\Release\netcoreapp3.0\..."And if you need some more examples and more information, there’s more here: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/
Symlink Creator
A simple UI tool for creating symbolic links (automates the procedure I explained above):
FileASSASSIN
Developed by Malwarebytes (a fairly trustworthy company that specializes in fighting malware), the tool fixes a variety of errors when dealing with undeletable files, starting from “Cannot delete file: Access is denied” to
“The source or destination file may be in use.”
It’s tenacious. It’s free.
DeepRemove
DeepRemove is an open source program that deletes hierarchies of folders that windows can’t deal with. There is two versions of the program: one created with C# that has a user interface and deletes the folders by calling Kernal32, the other, created with C++, doesn’t have a user interface and deletes the folders by using the C++ standard library (STL). The latter version must be run using the command line. You can find both versions and the source code on the project’s GitHub.
Download Deep Remove: https://github.com/juanpablojofre/deepremove
TLDR: Review of Long Path Tool
If you jumped straight to this part, I’ll include some questions and answers right below for your reference. Hope this helps!
No, at least not without your credit card, and I doubt it does much even with your credit card.
No. In fact, the trial (which is what you get without paying) might even create hard-to-remove temporary files to your computer and only remove them if you pay. I think that’s what you call extortion.
No, there are plenty of free alternatives around. I can’t think of any reason why you should.
I have a list available right here – check it out: Long Path Tool alternatives.
You’re in luck! I actually posted a solution to this earlier – you can see it here: Fixing error: “The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.”
Last Words
I hope this honest (if incomplete) review will help someone avoid paying this company. And in case someone from KrojamSoft reads this post, please get in touch and explain yourselves – I’d love to understand what drives you to spamming like this.
Oh, and even if you don’t get in touch, please stop the spam.
He's been a developer from 2004 (starting with PHP and Java), and he's been working on .NET projects, Azure, Office 365, SharePoint and a lot of other stuff. He's also Microsoft MVP for Azure.
This is his personal professional (e.g. professional, but definitely personal) blog.
- Long Path Tool – an unfortunate review - March 3, 2025
- Copilot Android app refusing to take pictures? I have the dumbest fix you’ll ever hear, but it’ll work, trust me. - February 26, 2025
- Adventures in the Windows 11 24H2-land: How to restore your webcam after February 2025 Patch breaks it? - February 25, 2025
