By Philip Churchill on March 20th, 2008
"Invalid file handle" Error Message – Help is at Hand
Have you ever experienced the “Invalid file handle” error message when moving, copying or trying to delete files that reside on your Windows Home Server?
We have a couple of ways for you to correct this problem. The 1st is a blog entry on the site “My Name is better than yours” that takes you step by step through reassigning permissions on your home server.
The other is the Windows Home Server Cleanup Tool which tests if your home server files are readable. The .cmd file by catsaver is available with additional information from here.
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Why should anyone expect an “Invalid file handle” error message when moving, copying or trying to delete files that reside on your Windows Home Server?
Wasn’t “WHS data corruption” bad enough for us WHS users to experience, which remains unfixed and unresolved!
This is so typical of Microsoft, having us check to test rather than Microsoft to see if things will work right. How many more so called Microsoft WHS tools will be needed for testing by customers?
Wasn’t WHS suppose to be ready for consumers, or is that still for beta testers only mode?
Unfortunately, this “Invalid File Handle” tester still don’t resolve or provide the full answer as I quote from the source, “Sometimes the .cmd file still can’t delete the reparse points. That’s a problem I can’t solve. This seems to usually occur with filenames that use characters that are not native to the installed language on your WHS”.
This just shows once again how much tinkering WHS requires it’s users to experience as unpaid testers!!!
Just keep using WHS and you’ll soon find out Aaron!
@Aaron Incoherent Ramblings? Just 2 bugs?
I suppose then the faulty algorithm in the WHS Drive Extender software doesn’t bother you? Especially, when it’s a proven design flaw that leads to data corruption.
You did read Microsoft KB 946676, right?
Microsoft has warned users of its new Windows Home Server that the device could corrupt data when saving files from certain applications. The results could ruin family photos, small-business records or anything else users save on the system.
Or how about, Windows Home Server nearly 2,400 bugs reported here:
http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=39002
I don’t think anyone would be too happy with that. 🙁
or here: 3377 submitted by beta participants! 🙁
http://www.blogs.technet.com/homeserver/archive/2007/03/22/entomophobia.aspx
In addition, Windows Home Server advertises that you can remotely control the PC’s you have in your home. But, unless you read the fine print, which isn’t advertised in an easy to find up front label at the time of purchase, WHS doesn’t support Remote Desktop to Vista Home Premium 32bit edition (or even Vista 64bit) unlike Windows XP Tablet, Media Center Edition, and XP Professional with Service Pack 2.
Which I had upgraded from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium, thinking what was advertised and promised by Windows Home Server to remote control my newest Vista Home “Premium” edition PC, which wasn’t the case at all.
WHS is just like Vista, in that many things were promised, but in reality I am NOT able to actually use WHS as advertised.
Failure to deliver what was promised…
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2209837,00.asp
Sigh…. This just happened to me yesterday, after lots of head scratching I found this article and cleanup utility… Many thanks to the author….. Voodoo curses to the WHS team!!!
Lee
Unsuspecting WHS / EX470 β tester
Gotta say – I’m also getting very frustrated with data corruption issues on my WHS. I started discovering that what I thought to be safe and sound copies of my files (software and backup copies of document files) are now inaccessible due to “Invalid File Handle” errors. Only just discovered this after trying to retrieve a document, but have now discovered 5 whole folders of approx 30MB are inaccessible… and I have these folders duplidated for safety!!!????.
Will try the suggested fixes, but really am starting to wonder if I’ll be able to trust this “drive extender” technology.
Come on Microsoft – get your a into g and fix it !!!
Well good greef. just found out that i have 70GB of unaccessable music. good job microsoft. lucky for me i had all of my music on my laptop. I’m using the cleanup tool to scan my other files right now hopefully i won’t have anymore problems.
on a different note i still can’t get the connector software to work and i can’t remote access any of my computers. well I’m a little confused shouldn’t something that is ment to be in a home enviroment be easy to setup and use and not mess up the stuff you put on it.
There is a fix, if you search into the forums. Can’t guarantee it will work for you, but here it is: http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2614910&SiteID=50
Short vers: command prompt type:
fsultil fsutil reparsepoint delete
It works for me best using the full path and file name. Then I could access the file. However, some were corrupted at this point, and couldn’t be saved, so, use at your own risk.
er, not fsutil fsutil, just
fsutil reparsepoint delete “FileName”
I was looking for an explanation and I found this forum where one guy is just happy with Microsoft. Everybody is frustrated nut he is happy. I found problems with invalid handles reported by WHS trying to backup or replicate some files. All I could do was to delete them. They are just occupying space on the disk for nothing. I see there are ways and even tools to get rid of this invalid handles BUT this is not a solution. THIS IS A DISASTER. Microsoft gave us the knife and now is forcing us to cut our vanes. I don’t want to delete files which I put there to be safe. What is wrong with this happy guy?? We bought the Home Server to have a simple backup space for our precious data. This is the simplest scenario that MS presented to dell this joke of OS. Now We have to use something else to backup the data that was backed up in the WHS. Yes now I understand why there is the capability to backup the server data . . . What is wrong with this happy guy??
A few days ago the server refused to connect. It just disappeared. Took one full day to get access back by reinstalling, fiddling, reconfiguring re re re… and that was my weekend.
Why did I bother? Because the data on the hard drives CAN NOT BE RECOVERED unless you have the original machine running. THINK ABOUT THAT you happy with MS guy. If the hardware that’s running the OS on the WMS that you happily own fails ALL your data is GONE…. What is wrong with this happy guy anyway??
Is people like this that keep businesses like MS afloat . . .
Please help!!!
I can’t print using RDP. The printer in the RDP environment was installed through network printer sharing.
when i try to print using RDP ” The Handle is Invalid”.
Any ideas?
I’m on Windows Server 2008, and I’ve noticed this error when saving a file from Firefox or Chrome with the following steps:
– Right-click and save image as to a network folder
– try to copy and paste that image file to your desktop
– Boom! “Invalid File Handle”
IE does this without issue, so I wonder if it has something to do with the way these other browsers and programs are writing the file data to disk.
Hy. I runned into that damn problem too. And after days of searching I finally
found this software: Long Path Tool.
It’s GREAT. You can find it here:
href=”http://www.deletelongfile.com”>Long Path Tools
“Long Path Tool”:http://www.deletelongfile.com/
But http://www.deletelongfile.com is stolen version of Path Too Long Utility from http://www.pathtoolong.com. You will not receive support or software update there, so you’d better go to the original version provider.