exe file after you’ve clicked on it? Many users have been complaining about this in Windows forums and looking for how to fix an. So, what happens if Windows cannot open an. But, even then, the principle remains the same. In some cases, especially for small programs, you have to click the actual executable file. The icon is linked to the main executable file, so once it’s clicked, the program loads and starts running. Usually, once a program is installed, you can click its desktop icon and run the program. exe file format is the default application mode on all iterations of the Windows operating system. Without this file, the program would be just a collection of useless files. exe component, which is the main program file. exe file, the system is able to run the corresponding program because the file is in a format that it can read and “execute”.Įvery native Windows application, installed program, and downloaded game has an. An executable file is a file that can be executed by the operating system. exe is a type of file on Windows that denotes an installed program or application. How did these files specifically come to you? How were they transferred? Had they been compressed? If you can describe (in detail) the route they took from hard drive to hard drive, CD to CD, network to network, we may be able to pinpoint where, exactly, the resource fork info was lost and find a workaround.An executable file or. FAT32, NTFS both seem to do ok with it most times). They should use a compression (.zip usually works) that preserves resource fork information, or store the files on a file system that retains this information (MS-DOS format = yuck for resource forks. There's not much you can do to get around the problem without teaching the clients new tricks. Windows machines know nothing of reading/writing Mac-compatible resource forks.Ģ) The files originated on a Mac, but were either transferred with a protocol or compressed with a program that ignores or strips files of that resource fork information. doc extension to associate the file with Word.ġ) The files originated from a Windows machine (or some non-Apple operating system) and no extension was put on the file.

This doesn't happen with files with extensions most of the time, because even if a Word document lost its resource fork (type/creator codes, specifically) information, it could still use the. What's happening is that Mac OS X can't read the file's resource fork (and, since there's no extension on those files either, it can't even 'guess'), and therefore doesn't know what the file is.

How to play .exe files on mac