Sep
02
2007
Windows Weirdness
Posted by: Nimda in Windows, Operating Systems, Computer Talk, Tech Support, MicrosoftThere’s just some computer things that can’t be explained.
Nowhere is this more true than in the wonderful world of Windows computers.
Try this:
Open Explorer and Create a new folder.
Call the New Folder “Con” - without the quotes.
For some reason a Folder called Con cannot be created.
Weird huh?!
.
Entries (RSS)
September 4th, 2007 at 3:21 am
The explanation is simple enough, you can’t create for example “com1″ or “com2″ either. These are reserved names for devices, “con” being the console, “com1″ being the first RS-232 port, etc.
September 4th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Thanks for the explanation spock. Now I know why you can’t create folder names with those reserved words like lpt1 and the ones that you mentioned. Thanks.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
No thanks are necessary. It’s all in a day’s work, explaining DOS from back in the day of floppy disks for all the Windows users now 20 years later. It’s not like there’s a logical system to this wonderful OS. Atleast the device NUL still works. Open your console and try “move C:\WINDOWS NUL:”
Don’t worry, atleast a modern Windows won’t let you do that. You can copy stuff to NUL however. It’s the equivalent of /dev/null on unix based systems, that is “nothing.” But the logic ends there, since by moving a file to /dev/null on a unix based system it logically deletes the file, while the move command in Windows doesn’t do that.
The NUL: device is useful for console batch files if you don’t want any output. Just redirect output by using >NUL: and all messages go to bit heaven. It doesn’t work on pop-ups and dialog boxes however, since it’s all DOS… er, I mean “console.”