File name too long

My OS is Win98SE. This problem has me stumped! While visiting a website I decided to create a shortcut and include it with my favorites. The file name is around 80 characters long. I no longer need the shortcut and tried to delete it. Got an error message saying file name too long - rename. Tried renaming and got same error message. Tried deleting it - same message. Tried deleting it in safe mode - still no good. I can't copy it, move it, delete it, or rename it. I'm stuck. How can I permanently remove this icon. Thanks.

 

I think the easiest thing to do is use MoveOnBoot. It's free and it will move or delete the file or files you indicate on the next boot, before Windows loads and can interfere.

 

Worked like a charm! Thanks a million. Another question if you don't mind. When the shortcut still existed, my bootup time was twice as long as normal. How can a file of this type affect startup time? Thanks again.

 

When 98 is first booting up, it is in a sort of dos mode, and dos doesn't like names with more than 8 charactors, you had this file with 80 charactors, and it was being read each time the computer booted. Nothing was done, it was just read.
You are lucky in one respect. I have seen the message from scandisk in dos about a file with an unusually long filename, and to run Scandisk for windows, except that you couldn't get into windows.

 

Thanks for the explanation Mark. Makes sense. It's hard to believe one file that contained too many characters would have this affect at startup. System is running great. We can now close this post. Thanks again.