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Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Visual SourceSafe - Invalid DOS Path

I hate wrong error messages. I hate messages that lead me in wrong direction. Yesterday I've spend too much time on resolving problem with VSS. I had to add new user to VSS. Pretty simple task.
I've started and bang: "Invalid DOS PATH \\server\vss\project\users"
I've checked path - it's OK.
Double checked. Again the same error.
I've checked my privileges - Full access.
I've made local copy of VSS repository - still the same problem.

It's time to search for solution on Internet.
Few click, and I've got it: no template.ini file in \\server\vss\project\users catalog.
So, I've copied ss.ini of one user to template.ini, removed unneeded lines, and task completed.
Full description of solution.

Whenever you are programming, please, make sure that error messages are meaningful to users. Try to give as many details as possible, it will help to solve problem.

Cheers, Paweł

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had the exact same problem. You saved me so much time. Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot ,It works .

Paweł Barut said...

I'm glad I could help you.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Thank you - I was tearing my hair out.
As a developer I hear your comment and will try to remember this as an example!
G.R.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot. You also saved me from a nervous crack. I also agree with your opinion about the error messages. I work at sw development and try always to take care of that cuestion but I've found it's very difficult to concenciate programmers about the importance of error management and accurate messages. Well, I'll continue trying to improve it. Again, thanks.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting the fix. I was going nuts trying to figure this one out. You saved me a lot of time. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for solution

Anonymous said...

Worked great. Thanks for the help.

Ionreflex said...

Google it, don't forget to google it! :o)

Tankiou a lot man!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your help. I asked our IM people and they could not resolve the issue because of the misleading message.

Even thought this was originally posted 2 years ago, it is still helping people!

Anonymous said...

Still helpful! thanks

Unknown said...

Thanks a lot, I just had this issue this week!

Anonymous said...

6/19/09 - still useful as now forgotten knowledge.

Anonymous said...

Still used! Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Thank you!
I am gald I googled it after ab0ut 15 minutes.

Anonymous said...

great soultion. thanks

Anonymous said...

my solution to this problem was that the DOS path was too long. i had originally created my projects under c:\LocalProjects and added my stuff to VSS there. When I got a new image, I wanted to set the working folder to c:\DocAndSettings\user.name\My Documents\VS2008\Projects. They all failed because of invalid DOS filename. GRRRRRRR. Once i set the working path to c:\LocalProjects, all was good.

Anonymous said...

This post is still helping! It's a good thing it showed up fairly high in my search results. Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your solution, it worked for us. Funniest part was, I did not know what should be the content of template.ini, hence just created a empty file and viola! it worked...

Anonymous said...

Big Thanks.

Paweł Barut said...

It amazes me, that this is still useful.

/Paul

John Frag said...

Long Path Tool helped me to solve that problem

Mudassir said...

Many thanks buddy.

Christopher said...

Thanks So Much!!!!!

Creating an empty template.ini file in the user folder worked!!!

Anonymous said...

Still the most useful post I found in 2014!! THANK YOU!

Soham Shah said...

Still a life saver post in 2023.

 

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