Why doesn't my Windows XP system display drive letters for my network drives and why can't I create long filenames and folders?

A. You might receive the error

"The drive that this file or folder is stored on does
not allow long file names, or names containing blanks or
any of the following characters: \ / : , ; * ? < > |"

You might also notice that no drive letters are assigned to your network drives. These problems can occur if Windows Explorer starts before your network logon script has finished running. A new feature in XP known as Fast Logon Optimization allows faster logon by letting the logon process continue, even while other tasks finish (such as applying Group Policy).

To resolve this error, you can revert the computer to a Windows 2000-style execution by performing the following steps:

1. Open the Group Policy Editor (GPE) and locate the Group Policy that affects the client computers (e.g., the Domain Group Policy).
2. Navigate to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System, Logon, then double-click "Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon."
3. Select Enabled, then click OK.
4. Close GPE.