how to determine which program will execute a file

[MickeyF]

A variation of this came up in a previous thread from a month or two ago, but I've now run into this same problem in a different light. I've got a vbscript file, IsmInfo.vbc, that I want to execute. I'm running in a TCC.exe (64-bit) window on Windows 7-64. I don't understand what determines where it finds the executable program to run.

->which isminfo
isminfo is an executable extension : C:\Windows\system32\cscript.exe /nologo c:\Utils\IsmInfo.vbc
 
->assoc .vbc
.VBC=VBCFile
 
->ftype vbcfile
vbcfile=C:\Windows\SysWow64\CScript.exe /nologo "%1" %*
 
->set pathext
.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC

I've even searched my registry to see if I could figure out why it's picking the system32 version instead of the syswow64 version, and nothing I see there tells me anything.

Another interesting tidbit is that if I start up cmd.exe, whether the 32-bit or 64-bit version (using the Windows Run... option of course), both of them run the 32-bit (syswow64) version of cscript.exe.

Just in case there was any doubt, I thought I would add that if I manually use the 32-bit version of cscript.exe (c:\Windows\SysWow64\cscript.exe /nologo c:\utils\IsmInfo.vbc) within tcc.exe, of course this works fine.

 

[keithg1964]

Don't know if this helps, but on my system vbc is not defined, but vbs is and all the above commands point to the system32 version.

 

[Charles Dye]

I don't know whether this is relevant or not, but have you tried ASSOC /U and FTYPE /U ?

 

[Steve Fabian]

Also remember, that an executable extension takes priority over the program selected by assoc / ftype.

 

[MickeyF]

I don't know whether this is relevant or not, but have you tried ASSOC /U and FTYPE /U ?

I wasn't aware of that, but no, it doesn't help because there is nothing applicable in there. But thanks for the attempt!

 

[MickeyF]

Don't know if this helps, but on my system vbc is not defined, but vbs is and all the above commands point to the system32 version.

You're right - vbc is a special file type that I've created for vbscript files that are to be processed through cscript instead of wscript. Note that I want it to use the SysWow64 version, not the system32 version, because I specifically need 32-bit processing, not 64.

 

[MickeyF]

Also remember, that an executable extension takes priority over the program selected by assoc / ftype.

Yes, Steve, you're right. However, what I don't know is how executable extension determines what is to be run. I couldn't find that information anywhere.

 

[Charles Dye]

set .vbc

 

[MickeyF]

set .vbc

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Charles, you're a genius. I new a lot about this area, but that's one that I had completely forgotten. I found I had buried it in my tcstart.btm file. I changed it, and now it works. Thank you!

 

[Charles Dye]

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Charles, you're a genius.

Credit Steve; he seems to be the only one who actually read your error message.

 

[MickeyF]

Genius hat officially transferred to Steve.