Symptom: In Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2 you receive the following Warning when running the Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer.
Severity: Warning
Short file name creation should be disabled
What is short file name creation?
Back in the good ol' days of windows, filenames were limited to a format of 8 characters for the name, a period, and then 3 characters for a file extension. The filename was limited by FAT formatted partitions. Unless running very old legacy applications, this can be safely turned off to help with performance.
Solution: Complete the following steps below to disable short file name creation.
- Open up an elevated powershell console
- Execute the following command
- Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem" -Name NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation -Value 1
- Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem" -Name NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation -Value 1
- Optionally, you can open up registry viewer and confirm the value has been changed.
Notes: An official KB article from Microsoft on this topic can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff633453(v=ws.10).aspx
thank you, but still didin't understand the benefit of disabling short file names and why is it more secure.
Per the recommendation, it's more for performance than security.