I (and my colleague) are having this problem with 32-bit applications on a 64-bit Windows 7 OS. We have also found the same problems when we invoke a 64-bit application and pass a path as described below as a parameter in cmd.exe.
Given the path "C:\dir1\dir2\file1.txt", we have some 32-bit applications that don't appear to be able to consistently resolve that path and find the file if there is a hidden file of a particular naming structure causing it to lose it's way.
For example, given the directory/file structure:
\dir1
\dir2
\file1.txt
\.dir2Blah
Of importance is that the "hidden" file's name starts with the same characters as those which indicate a directory at that same level of the hierarchy. What comes after that in the hidden file's name is irrelevant. It could be called ".dir2Whatever".
The problem is that more often than not (but not consistently always) some 32-bit applications we use can't find the file1.txt file. We're told it can't be found or it doesn't exist, etc. in the application. Using Process Monitor, we found the reason appears to be that while the path being asked for is C:\dir1\dir2\file1.txt, the path being evaluated by the the Windows system is C:\dir1\.dir2Blah\file1.txt.
We have found that some 32-bit applications appear to be able to work fine with those (what I would call) erroneous paths and successfully find the files in question but others do not.
As I said above, we have also found we can reproduce the problem with 64-bit applications if we try to open the file through a cmd.exe prompt; for example, "textpad.exe \dir1\dir2\file1.txt".
We've "googled" this problem for 2 days because we're completely stumped and cannot believe that no one else has ever encountered this if it's so "easy" to reproduce. My colleague and I are both able to cause the failure; not consistently, but file access will fail more than half the time when we set up the structure I described.
I've included a picture of Process Monitor showing this failure in two applications but succeeding in a third...here.
Can anyone tell me what is going on? First, why is it changing the path to use that hidden file rather than the directory name provided? And, more importantly, how can we make it stop ;-)?
Cheers, jtm
Added later:
Here's the "dir /x" output for a directory where I'm having this problem.
24/05/2017 12:17 PM <DIR> .
24/05/2017 12:17 PM <DIR> ..
24/05/2017 12:17 PM 12 BLAHTS~1 .blahtst
23/05/2017 03:06 PM 104 JSHINT~1 .jshintrc
24/05/2017 12:16 PM <DIR> blah
24/05/2017 12:16 PM 0 blank.txt
24/05/2017 12:15 PM 6,624 INDEX~1.HTM index.html
24/05/2017 10:48 AM <DIR> js
It also indicates how we stumbled on the problem. I have an html file that is trying to load a JavaScript file under the /js directory, but there is also a .jshintrc file at the same level and my old Apache server can't find the files to serve them. If I remove the .jshintrc file, I can get around this, but this project isn't one I created and I'm leery of just removing things willy nilly.
