M.I.5¾ wrote:
> "smlunatick" <yveslec@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:148f41ea-4fa5-4c00-9635-8484287a6a75@w24g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 26, 12:36 pm, "M.I.5¾" <no....@no.where.NO_SPAM.co.uk> wrote:
>> "smlunatick" <yves...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>
>> news:a83e88bf-fb1e-4b65-8979-372b203f4641@d1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>> On Aug 25, 1:32 pm, L'Ecrevisse
>>
>> <L'Ecrevi...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>>> Using Windows XP, I have been trying to save a video saved to my HDD to
>>> a
>>> flash drive.
>>
>>> The problem is, when I r/click and select the 'copy' option, it saves it
>>> to
>>> the flash drive as an audio file.
>>
>>> When I r/click and select 'move' it saves it to the flash drive and then
>>> plays correctly as a video.
>>
>>> Could someone please explain to me what has happened and what I need to
>>> do
>>> to change whatever has happened to the 'copy' function?
>>
>> What is the complete size of the video file? Most "flash" drives are
>> usually formatted in FAT32 mode. Microsoft has placed a limit on th e
>> file size stored on FAT32 as 4GB.
>>
>> -----------
>>
>> The limit is nothing to do with microsoft. It is a physical limitation of
>> the FAT32 filing system. Microsoft couldn't have made it larger if they
>> wanted to (except by using a different filing system).
>
> If this is a limit of the FAT32 system, then why can you have large
> file in excess of 4GB under the older Windows 98.
>
> ---------------
>
> You couldn't. Windows 98 did not support files larger than 4GB. In fact
> Windows 98 (and indeed the whole Win 9x line) had a serious bug that
> limited
> files to 2GB for most applications under FAT32. The Win9x products
> incorrectly handled the file size a signed number. This was eroneous as a
> negative file size is an obviously absurd concept. But nevertheless, when
> the file exceded 2GB in size, windows reported its size as negative and
> most
> applications couln't cope. A few applications were aware of the problem
> and internally conveted the file size to a unsigned number and then
> correctly handled files of between 2 and 4GB.
That's because one of the bits (the MSB) in the word storing the filesize
was reserved for the sign bit (using signed integers), cutting the effective
range in half. I sure remember that problem popping up in Win98 - files
were limited to only 2 GB max, not 4 GB, with some apps.
And I think that bug was corrected in Win ME, with the newer version of the
shell32.dll file (that came with Win ME), if memory serves me correct. But
of course you were still limited to 4 GB for any single file, no matter
what, as long as you were using FAT 32.
And there never was a patch released that updated shell32.dll to fix that
for Win98/SE.
