David,

Cool! I run a bunch of xcopy's in a DOS bat file as my nightly backup. This should work better. Thanks.

Al

David: Very cool. Question is, how can you quickly locate those files that are doing the choking if you DON'T use XXCOPY?

Tim

Tim: Unfortunately, xcopy dies without any sort of error message. I guess you could run xcopy in verbose mode, and redirect the console output to a file, then review the file after the copy dies. I would guess that the last filename in the output file would be the culprit, although you still wouldn't know why the copy died. Being the pragmatist that I am, I'd say just download XXCOPY since it is small, free, and easy to install, copy your existing batch files, then edit the batch files to call XXCOPY rather than xcopy.

This was very cool and very useful indeed. Many Thanks.
Amit

You are right on the money, thanks! Also, to see which file was bombing out xcopy, simply run xcopy with the /L switch. This will list all files that would have been copied, without actually copying. This way, when you receive the error, the file giving the error will probably be near the last file listed that would have been copied.

I was having the same problem, running xcopy with the switches: /D /E /C /I /H /R /Y

I then added the /F switch so I had: /D /E /C /I /F /H /R /Y and the insufficient memory error no longer occured. To double check I removed the /F switch, tried again and the error came back!

Hmmm...

Looks like you can just use /n to copy using short filenames. They won't be a pretty, though they will be there if need be.

Sounded like xxcopy would also not complete the copy, that is just reports the error correctly.

Get used to stuff that works (linux) and it makes M$ shortcomings obvous!

B-)

Actually, in most cases there is probably a much easier way to resolve the issue. The error is occurring because the destination path for XCOPY is adding extra characters to the complete file path. Simply use the SUBST command to replace the destination path with a drive letter. That will eliminate the character limit problem.

BTW, thanks for the above info. I just came across this problem today and the above ideas would also have helped.

XXCOPY doesn't copy file permissions...

I got Xcopy to run by not using the /f /h /r switches. Hope this helps.

I was also having the "insufficient memory" problem and found the free Windows Resource Kit download contained RoboCopy.exe which was just the ticket. Try http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en, or Google for a download link. Only thing I didn't like as well was that I was unable to get it to accept directory paths with spaces for exclusion (but it does accept wildcards).

Hello,

Can anyone please tell me if this email box is still being monitored? I have wasted so much time in the past posting questions, comments, and suggestions to website, only to learn that most of the sites were no longer being monitored.

For this reason, I decided to create this form letter as a means of checking to verify that the site is still active, this way, no time is wasted responding to dead email boxes.

If this site were still being monitored, a simple “Yes” would be an ample reply; I will then post my comments.

Thanks,

Chat

its still being monitored

I do not use xcopy a lot, but recently had to when I wanted to copy files newer than a certain date to another folder, and could not find my usual tool beyond compare to do that. I hit upon same problem with xcopy -- 'insufficient memory'.

On trying more, I found it happened on long path/file name. Now of course, xcopy does not give any error message to that effect. It simply jumps out saying 'insufficient memory'. So how did i find what was actual error? Use 'xxcopy'. It clearly mentions the error about long pathname as it happens, but continues processing for other files.

I ran into the same issue and downloaded XXCopy as well. But then I stumbled upon another sweet utility I already had ... robocopy from the Windows Resource Kit tools. This simple command will mirror one directory from another!

robocopy f:\Download\Dev \\clarksrv\d$\systembackup\Download\Dev /MIR

Oops, sorry but I noticed I posted the same thing that Walter did above. DOH!

Hi,

I had a similair problem with XCOPY - Insufficient Memory error, and this was caused by one file having a huge file name, in it itself in a deep folder structure, taking it past the 256 max length.

I was struggling to fix the file (it could not be opened, renamed, moved, or deleted) but fixed it by using another PC to map to the folder concerned. I was able to rename the file from the other PC.

Beautiful!!

Thanks for the Robocopy reference, ran into the XCOPY - Insufficient Memory error via xcopy /s /e /v /c /d, used robocopy and all is well. After 20 years of (occasional use) on xcopy, I've switched to robocopy
-Scott

Had same problem today, solved it with SUBST command as suggested above. Thanks!