Running 16 bit applications from Windows 2008 and 2012 file server

Moving data from an older file server to the new Windows Server 2008 or 2012 may result in the older 16-bit applications running from a network share failing to obey us. Although the system on which we are trying to run the application from a network share does not change, a message may appear informing that the application or one of its components has not been found:

Can't run 16-bit Windows program
Cannot find file X: \ directory_name \ file_name.exe (or one of this components)

How is it possible that the very network share where the application files are located affects its launch? Well, in the new Windows Server 2008 and 2012, support for 16-bit filenames and paths has been disabled. As a result, older applications that truncated names longer than 8 + 3 characters using a tilde character (e.g., name ~ 1) will not get into SMB shares using such a reference. By default, the new server does not support them. So how do you deal with the above problem? There are two possibilities: either we change the names of directories and files in the path to the application in accordance with the old 8 + 3 standard (eight-character file name and three-character extension) or restore support for short names in the registry of the new file server. The following registry key is responsible for this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ FileSystem \ NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation

The values that it can take are described here .