file “outreg2_prf.ado” not found

So, I get the above stata error when using outreg2 which I install with “ssc install outreg2″.

This articles tells you (1) what I did to trigger the error message and (2) what steps I took to fix it.

UPDATE JUL2009: A good comment below suggests (from stata staff) that  it has to do with disk writes. So, that’s the best answer to date.

It comes up at odd times. I’m running a loop with 600 sets of 3 regressions and am outregging to each separately. That is:

forvalues i=1/600 {
  regress XXX
  outreg2 using file1
  regress XXX
  outreg2 using file2
  regress XXX
  outreg2 using file3
}

And so it’s appending to the existing file each time.

I also had two variants. That is, I used:
quietly: outreg2 using file2, brackets
the quietly surpresses output and the brackets replaces the parentheses (that excel thinks are negative numbers) with brackets.

I then went and looked for the outreg2_prf.ado file. I checked in C:\ado\plus\o where the other outreg2 files are. I couldn’t find this file. So I downloaded it and saved it to the directory. I got the file from http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s456416.html

***NOT FIXED
Well, I fixed the missing .ado error, but my code still breaks at a random place and says that one of my outreg2 output files is missing. Since it doesn’t break the same place each time, I’m a bit confused as to what’s going on. Still troubleshooting by trying to run it from a different directory and then on a different computer.

***
ACK! Giving me the error again! I am trying ssc uninstall outreg2 and then ssc install outreg2.

Also trying restarts of Stata. I’m running Stata 10 SE by the way.

***
Ok. Not sure what I did, but it appears that I fixed it. I did three things:
1) I changed my regression directory. I had previously had the working directory under some really long (more than 100 characters) pathname, so I put it into c:\data.
2) I put my do file in the same directory
3) I closed STATA, opened, and ran ssc uninstall outreg2 and then ssc install outreg2 as the first thing in my new session.

Oddly, neither 1 alone nor (1+2) fixed the problem.

Bottom line: I don’t think the bug is directly in outreg2. I think it is related to long pathnames.

Oddly enough, the code *did* work with this path:
C:\Documents and Settings\Howard\My Documents\UCEI\Bushnell EU Carbon\stage2\Project Management10 – panel of stock prices vs market model plus price of carbon
but not with this path:
C:\Documents and Settings\Howard\My Documents\UCEI\Bushnell EU Carbon\stage2\Project Management18 – add oil price\regress

Hope nobody has to deal with this (including myself) and that my troubleshooting steps are helpful to someone someday (including myself)