Windows 7 Warning

I have spent 2 days repairing and reinstalling Siemens Step 7 after my projects loaded with various dll errors and finally I was unable to view any program blocks within any of my projects. Coincidently all my windows shortcuts within the Accessories folder from the start menu had lost their icons and no longer worked. I was baffled but have finally found the cause of the problem and a solution I thought I'd share with other Windows 7 users in case the same thing happens to you. It's all down to Environment Variables and just installing an update for one program on my pc pushed one variable value (PATH) over the limit of 2048 characters and has lost me 2 days trying to figure it out. I followed the instructions on the link below and suddenly my Step 7 software works fine again and all my shortcuts are back to normal. I'm using 64 bit Windows 7 Professional but I believe the same applies on 32 bit versions.

Please read here http://allgeekallthetime.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/path-over-2048-chars-kills-windir.html

That's good to know. I don't have a problem yet, but ran the utility & was surprised at how many entries were in the path. I deleted a few I think I can live without.