71
18
As a power user, I frequently use the Run dialog.
I can understand why the following commands work, as they are in the PATH
environment variable.
mspaint
diskmgmt.msc
explorer
These commands also work in CMD.
The commands below work in run, but they are not in the PATH
, and they don't work in CMD.
firefox
winword
iexplore
How does Run know where these files are?
5Ah, this probably explains why you can't have multiple programs with the same name work as open with options. Poor design. – curiousdannii – 2016-08-06T03:43:23.190
2Yes, almost. But Open with dialog reads from
HKCR\Applications
andRegisteredApplications
– w32sh – 2016-08-06T05:39:01.9834
Microsoft provided a video about this: https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Defrag-Tools/Defrag-Tools-133-App-Paths
– magicandre1981 – 2016-08-06T06:53:03.9576You can of course use the
start
builtin which does search the app paths. – Neil – 2016-08-06T17:09:46.0501
This is pretty well documented here. I've also explained how cmd does its search here -- it's a bit of a special case distinct from Win32 APIs.
– Bob – 2016-08-07T05:05:56.963@curiousdannii can you elaborate? We can have multiple processes with the same name running in Windows – phuclv – 2016-08-08T04:26:45.170
@LưuVĩnhPhúc You can't have multiple file associations with the same executable file name. Or at least I haven't figured out how – curiousdannii – 2016-08-08T04:29:32.327
@curiousdannii: Not possible using UI but you can do so by editing the registry. – w32sh – 2016-08-08T04:48:16.117
@w32sh The annoying thing is even if you pick out an app using the file selector the UI gives you, it will use an existing app if it has the same file name. – curiousdannii – 2016-08-08T04:53:13.430
Correct. But you can do so using regedit.exe. If you have a specific requirement, pls post a new question. – w32sh – 2016-08-08T04:58:36.107
@curiousdannii why not? For example MS Word is associated with .doc, .docx, .docm, .dot, .dotx, .dotm... – phuclv – 2016-08-08T05:32:05.283
@LưuVĩnhPhúc I mean that you can't associate .doc with two programs in two different directories if the filename of both is word.exe (without using regedit that is.) – curiousdannii – 2016-08-08T05:37:24.360
@w32sh I wasn't wanting to derail this or get support for my issues - I only originally commented because I thought your post was interesting, and it taught me something new: that Windows likes to operate on path-less filenames sometimes. – curiousdannii – 2016-08-08T05:40:15.203