Buggish: The full path must be less than 260 characters long; other restrictions apply. If the report server is in native mode, the path must start with slash.

One of those moments where I just want to pull my hair out. I had this working last night, and suddenly stopped working. I just spent the last several hours troubleshooting the error: tried different configurations, parameters, figure out how to use Fiddler, several google searches, etc.

The problem/answer was basically that I was using the wrong slashes. The path should be using forward slashes '/' not back slashes '\' and without rdl.

\Folder1\ReportName

Psychology

To give myself the tiniest of credit, I initially solved this while rushing to pick up my daughter. It's a lame excuse but I think it important to why I didn't remember what I did. It worked and I left figuring I could return to see my work.

I think I left my project running and stopped the debugging, so I didn't see what values I ended putting in. This probably wouldn't have helped because I probably wouldn't have looked at the direction of the slash. I figured I had it in the code because I got tired of entering the data so I hard-coded the initial value.

I assumed that was correct and maybe I just put in the wrong path. I tried several paths like http://SsrsServer/ReportServer, http://SsrsServer/Reports/, http://Ssrs/Reports/browse, /folder1/reportName, /folder1/reportName.rdl, and also sorts of permutations of paths and file names.

I do not know why I didn't even check the slashes as that should have been one of the first things to check. To make it worse, I do not know why I even thought of it so suddenly. After this entire ordeal, I recall how I figured it out in the first place was because I used the http path then removed the beginning part. Because it used forward slashes, this fixed my problem.

Sometimes I really find how amazing my brain is at forgetting things.

Workaround: Infrastructure messed up DNS hostname and I can no longer access a server but server is up

I have a custom tool that uses server name to access server as that is the highly recommended method to access servers. Suddenly I no longer can access a server. I can no longer remote desktop or ping. Ping is not just a timeout but does not even resolve the name. I really, really, really wanted to avoid having to modify my configurations for a temporary change of a hostname to ip address.

One major reason that I want to avoid this is because Windows is extremely finicky about what users is logged into the server. I have to use a special admin account to login not the default one that I use to log into Windows (which also translates to the default IIS user that the web tool uses). Resetting this password to set a new password is still unclear and very messy. The cleanest method that has worked consistent is just to reboot the entire server which runs other web applications.

Anyways, I recall during a cloud custover where we used the host file to resolve names that have not been set up yet. I used to use this for web hostnames. I thought it was worth a shot and found that it also works for network folders.

The file for Windows 10 is located at (default) C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. You may need to run the text editor as administrator for this to save. Anyways, this saved me a lot of time and the hassle to revert it back once infrastructure team fixes the issue.

There should be a cleanup to remove the entry in the host file. I am likely to forget this as I probably will soon to forget to follow up with infrastructure team on my ticket.

Buggish: Windows calculating time stuck at zero to copy/unzip with windows explorer

Today I've had it. I tried to unzip a file from my local drive to a sub-folder in the same folder and the Windows download window pops up with its calculating. The zip file has around 20 files with each no more than a few kilobytes.

The popup just stayed at 0% for at least 15 minutes with the animation still running like it is thinking. I read a post that it should still be doing the activity while it is calculating but this is definitely not happening on a Windows 10 as I only see a single file in the sub-folder. After I cancel, all I see is that one file.

I do not know why this happens. This is not the first time. I have this issue with copying files from folder to folder. It is also kind of random with a small number of files, maybe under 10 files. Usually it will eventually copy/unzip/move. But the calculate time takes way, way, way longer than the actual action so what is the point of calculating the time?

I downloaded 7-zip and unzipped the files then canceled the windows unzip which was still calculating. So I waited 15 minutes, download another app, did the same activity that I originally requested, and checked the files before the calculate even reached 1%.

If it is something holding it up, it should either fail quickly or at least explain why it is taking forever.