Hi David, thanks for your suggestion. GetFileAttributesEx() won't help me. I had problems understanding why ::FindFirstFile and GetFileAttributes() report different set of file attributes on FAT32. And now I get it, TEMP files are not flushed to HDD, and therefore limitations of FAT can be see with ::FindFirstFile and not with GetFileAttributes(). I made a small test in which I created a file on USB stick (with FAT32 file system), then added a TEMP attribute to it and: a) read file attributes right after creating file b) then I safely removed USB drive (forcing windows to flush file to FAT) c) re-read file attributes, now both ::FindFirstFile and GetFileAttributes() reported correct values Now I can safely continue developing my enumeration class. One more time, a BIG thank you to all three of you for your help, suggestions and explanations. Best regards loreia