Because an asterisk is designated as a wild card search character in database systems.
* an asterisk
The asterisk is a special character and cannot be used in the names of any kind of file.
Asterisk.
The wildcard symbol that represents any collection of characters is the asterisk (). In various computing contexts, such as file searching or command-line operations, the asterisk can match zero or more characters in a string. For example, using "file" would match any file name that starts with "file," regardless of what follows.
When you get a message that says, 'Windows cannot access the specified device path file,' this means that an error has occurred which has corrupted the file and made it inaccessible.
Any file name can not contain /, \, *, ?, :, |, ", < or >..
If you cannot access and encrypted file after you have installed a new version of Windows and you have a backup copy of your certificate, install (import) the certificate in Windows. Then add it to the encrypted file.
Try this special utility: Windows Cannot Find Fix Wizard - it can solve several tips of Windows Cannot... errors. Google it. This file is typically in your C:\windows\system32\ or C:\windows\system directory. You may have to reinstall or patch windows.
You can use WinZip or WinRAR to extract the files. Files with the asterisk also require a password.
Wildcards in Windows are special characters used in file searches and commands to represent one or more unspecified characters. The most common wildcards are the asterisk () and the question mark (?). The asterisk represents any number of characters, while the question mark represents a single character. For example, using ".txt" in a search will find all text files, while "file?.doc" will find files like "file1.doc" and "fileA.doc" but not "file10.doc."
The following characters: colon, question mark, greater than symbol, less than symbol, backslash, slash, asterisk, quotation mark, or vertical bar.
There are like hundreds of them, I cannot list each on of them now.