Enabling 8.3 file name creation in Windows

This article applies to:

• Trustwave MailMarshal (SEG)
• Trustwave ECM/MailMarshal Exchange
• Microsoft Windows 

Question:

• How do I enable 8.3 file name creation in Windows?
• How do I check if 8.3 file name creation is enabled in Windows?
• Why do file names include ? characters?

Background:

MailMarshal file unpacking relies on 8.3 file names (short file names) where the long file name contains unicode characters. Creation of 8.3 file names may be disabled for a Windows system or individual drives/volumes. You must enable it to allow MailMarshal to operate properly.

Note: If you experience problems with deletion of temporary files on any Windows version, check this value. If MailMarshal reports file names with ? characters, this issue is a likely cause.

Procedure:

To enable creation of 8.3 file names globally on a server, set an entry in the Registry on each MailMarshal server (for MailMarshal SMTP, each email processing node server).

1. Run Regedit
2. Navigate to the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
3. This key should include a value NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation
4. Set the value to 0.
5. To apply the change, restart the server.

As always, take due care when editing the Registry.

Alternatively, set the above value to 2 and use FSutil to check or set the value for each volume.