# Known Issues

Flash Renamer is a very mature and stable program to use. There are however a few limitations and things that are useful to know about:

- If you are unable to rename a set of files, make sure that you have permission edit the files. Some user accounts may have restrictions that disallow editing files. This is especially true in Windows Vista, 7 and above. Different folder may have different settings. Also, not being the "owner" of the files may cause problem renaming the files.

- The characters `/ * " \ ? : > < |` are reserved by the filesystem and may not be used in filenames. Flash Renamer will not allow you to use these characters in filenames and they are automatically substituted with suitable characters. (Advanced users may what to change these replacement characters at the advanced tab in the settings window.)

- Windows 7 contains a bug that can cause system fonts to be disproportionally large, breaking applications like Flash Renamer and others. I have written a page about this problem and how to solve it here.

- If you are unable to start Flash Renamer for some reason, even after having re-installed the program, here is a tip that often fixes the problem: Go to the Flash Renamer program folder and remove/rename the file "FlashRen.exe.manifest".

- If Flash Renamer still does not work as it should, there is a problem solver page located in the settings that can help you in many situations!

- There is a bug in Windows Installer that can cause it to to start every time Flash Renamer starts on some computers. (Blame Microsoft for this - Flash Renamer does not use Windows Installer in any way.) I heard that this "FixIt" solution from Microsoft might be able to solve the problem. Also you can try to re-install the program that Windows Installer is trying to install.

- There is no support unicode characters (e.g. Asian languages). Unfortunately I am unable to do anything about this, because Microsoft has decided not to update Visual Basic 6 (the programming language that Flash Renamer is built with) anymore. The only solution would be a complete rewrite in another language, and that's not an option at this moment...

- Due to limitations in the system I'm using, the program can only handle a limited number of thumnails. If you run out of memory the remaining thumbnails will get blank file icons. A way around this is select smaller thumnails in the settings.

- On computers with Windows 95/98/Me, the amount of system resources is limited. Flash Renamer needs this to store the file icons and thumbnails. If many program are open, and many thumbnails are loaded, these resources may run out and the system will become unstable. I do not recommend viewing large amounts of thumbnails if you have Windows 95/98/Me. This problem does not affect systems with Windows NT4/2000/XP and later.

- If you get the error message "error reading directory structure" it might be that you are trying to read a path that is too long (because in Windows you can actually sometimes create paths that are longer than allowed...). Another possible cause is that you do not have permission to read the content of the folder.

- File dates in Flash Renamer may not always look the same as in Windows Explorer. This is due to daylight savings time offset. Apparently NTFS deliberately displayes date incorrectly due to backwards compatibility reasons (source). This is a quite complicated matter, and I am unsure of how to handle it correctly. Currently Flash Renamer uses the values returned by the system commands without any modifications.

- Files over 4GB will not display correct file sizes, due to 32bit limits in VB6.

- Windows lets the user choose the font size to be used in the system. Flash Renamer must obey this, but some settings may cause display problems. Flash Renamer has been tested to work with the most common settings, "small fonts" (Windows default) and "large fonts", but if you have other settings, texts, buttons etc. may look weird and possibly be unavailable. This is however only a visual thing, and does not affect Flash Renamer otherwise.

- If you start Flash Renamer using "Run as Administrator", drag and dropfrom Windows Explorer will not work. This is due to the way Windows implements User Interface Privilege Isolation between applications of different priviledge. Solving this problem is unfortunately quite hard and not very well documented.

- There have been reports that Flash Renamer does not work well with Novell networks. Since I don't have access to such a network I have not been able to confirm nor deny this. But Flash Renamer does work with the normal Windows network.