You'll be surprised what the Win32 API will accept as a path. You can run 'type \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\OSDataDevice\Windows\win.ini' at a command prompt, and it

You'll be surprised what the Win32 API will accept as a path. You can run 'type \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\OSDataDevice\Windows\win.ini' at a command prompt, and it will succeed. You can even provide a path like that to MS Paint on the command line, and it will happily open the file. But Shell32 (Windows Explorer and File Load/Save dialogs) won't accept that kind of path.