Error in Process.Start() -- the System Cannot Find the File Specified

Process.Start in C# The system cannot find the file specified error

Most likely your app is 32-bit, and in 64-bit Windows references to C:\Windows\System32 get transparently redirected to C:\Windows\SysWOW64 for 32-bit apps. calc.exe happens to exist in both places, while soundrecorder.exe exists in the true System32 only.

When you launch from Start / Run the parent process is the 64-bit explorer.exe so no redirection is done, and the 64-bit C:\Windows\System32\soundrecorder.exe is found and started.

From File System Redirector:

In most cases, whenever a 32-bit application attempts to access %windir%\System32, the access is redirected to %windir%\SysWOW64.

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[ EDIT ] From the same page:

32-bit applications can access the native system directory by substituting %windir%\Sysnative for %windir%\System32.

So the following would work to start soundrecorder.exe from the (real) C:\Windows\System32.

psStartInfo.FileName = @"C:\Windows\Sysnative\soundrecorder.exe";

Error in Process.Start() -- The system cannot find the file specified

Try to replace your initialization code with:

ProcessStartInfo info 
    = new ProcessStartInfo(@"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe");

Using non full filepath on Process.Start only works if the file is found in System32 folder.

The system cannot find the file specified error on process.Start();

I suspect the problem is that the filename you're specifying is relative to your working directory, and you're expecting Process.Start to look there when starting the process - I don't believe it works that way when UseShellExecute is false. Try just specifying the absolute filename of the process you want to start:

process.StartInfo.FileName = @"C:\Projects\MyProgram.exe";

Note that I've also removed the space from the end of the string you were assigning for the FileName property - it's entirely possible that was casuing the problem too.

Process.Start(...) throws The system cannot find the file specified

You shouldn't have to call cmd.exe /c, you should be able to run taskkill.exe directly.

This works on my machine (windows 10).Do you need to search for the files every time? I think for a simple utility app, having the paths hard coded should be fine.

var startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo()
{
    Verb = "runas",
    Arguments = "/f /im explorer.exe",
    FileName = @"c:\windows\system32\taskkill.exe"
};
var process = new Process { StartInfo = startInfo };
process.Start();
process.WaitForExit();
startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo()
{
    Verb = "runas",
    FileName = @"C:\windows\explorer.exe"
};
process = new Process { StartInfo = startInfo };
process.Start();

Process.Start() can't find file?

The reason that Chrome.exe & Devenv.exe are running automatically is that for both applications their paths (folders where they reside) are declared in the system Path environment variable.
There are 2 solutions for that.

1. You have to either call your Discoord.exe application by setting the full path of it, eg:

   Process.Start("C:\\Users\\AppData\\Local\\Discord\\app-0.0.307\\Discord.exe");

2. Set the environment Path in the system of your computer. eg. look the bellow screen-shot:

Process.Start(): The system cannot find the file specified, but my file path seems to be legit

This is down to the file system redirector. You will be running a 32 bit process on a 64 bit machine. That means that C:\Windows\system32 is transparently redirected to C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and I expect that du.exe cannot be found there. If you use C:\Windows\Sysnative instead then you will be able to locate the file.

However, I suspect that you have added du.exe to the system directory since this is not a standard Windows component. You should not do that. I recommend you put the file somewhere else because you simply should not be writing in the system directory.

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