If you are unable to download any exe file in Windows 10 or even on Windows 7/8/8.1, there may be a problem in your Internet Options or Windows Registry needs to be configured correctly.

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This error usually occurs when you have disabled downloading of executable files in Internet Options. This can be done manually by any user or it can also be altered automatically through some software. While there can be many other possibilities, these two are the most popular ones. We will talk about fixing unable to download any exe file in Windows 10 using both methods one by one. Let’s start with fixing Internet Options.

You may also like to read about our 3 must have tools to fix most Windows problems without getting help from a techie.

Quick Summary

Fixing unable to download any exe file using Internet Options

May be your Internet Options are not set properly that’s why .exe file downloading is creating an issue. Apply below steps to set Internet Options orderly.

1. Type Internet Options in the Start Menu and open the first result you get.
2. Go to Security tab, in Internet Options window, and select Custom Level.
   
3. A new window will open. Here find Downloads, expand it further and enable File Download and Font Download.
   
4. Scroll below and look for another option with name Launching applications and unsafe files, select the Prompt option for it.
   
5. Press Apply and OK. Close all open windows.

Fixing exe files not opening using Windows Registry

1. Open Registry Editor window by typing regedit.exe in Run dialog/. And go to the following entry.
   “HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPloiciesAttachments”.
   
2. Here you have to create a new 32-bit DWORD value with name ScanWithAntivirus and set its value to 1, this value will off or disable the scan.
   

So now any file you will download, antivirus software will not scan it, and your download will not suffer anymore.

Adding a Registry for EXE file extension

1. Download the following Registry key:
   Reset Exe in Windows Registry
2. Now go to file where you save it, double-click on it to add this registry into Windows Registry.
   
3. A confirmatory window will open to ask you for changes you are going to made in Registry Editor. Press Yes, and here you are done.
   

After applying the fixes, hopefully your issue of unable to downloading or save any exe file will be resolved. But be sure of what you are downloading, and always download from official websites to avoid viruses with downloads, as you may suffer any issue if the virus comes along with your download files.

I remembered that I used a tool called as where to find locations for any executable programs like this in a console:

Now I cannot find this tool. Not sure if Windows has a build-in tool to do that search?

CfinleyDavid.Chu.caDavid.Chu.ca

10 Answers

I think you may be thinking of the which command in Linux.

I'm not aware of an equivalent tool in Windows.

EDIT: I just remembered that there's a package called Unix Utils for Windows that would provide this functionality for you.

djhowelldjhowell

According to the StackOverflow answer at Is there an equivalent of 'which' on windows?, where.exe does this on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2003 and later:

Example

Output:

Simon DSimon D

EDIT: I should have added, if you can't use the WHERE command from the command prompt, check your PATH variable. (Just use the 'path' command.) Make sure C:WindowsSystem32 is in your path. That's where 'where.exe' is located.

WHERE is the command you're looking for! WHERE is like a cross between the UNIX shell built-in 'which' and the 'locate' command, in that it works for both command executables and regular files.

It's also somewhat more complex than either of those two, although, in general a simple

will work.

It's different from the 'locate' command in that it's not looking through the entire filesystem. Instead, the default behavior is to look for files in two locations:

• The current directory.
• All of the directories in the PATH variable.

So, any command that you can run directly from a command prompt without specifying the directory, will be found by the WHERE command. (Because any command like that is already in the PATH variable list.)

If you want to search only in the command path variable, you can use:

If, on the other hand, you want to find all copies of a file in a directory tree, you can use:

Finally, WHERE will find commands and any files with an extension from the PATHEXT variable without including the extension. All other files have to be specified either exactly or with wildcards.

Take for example the files 'dxdiag.exe' and 'dxdiagn.dll'. Note the following command and its output:

It succeeds in returning all versions of 'dxdiag.exe' because '.exe' is one of the extensions in the PATHEXT variable. (Note: 'WHERE dxdiag' would have worked as well, because C:WindowsSystem32 is in the PATH variable.)

on the other hand, fails to return any result, because '.dll' is not in PATHEXT.

In this case, look at the result that adding a wildcard gives us:

It successfully returns all versions of dxdiagn.dll.

For more information, use 'WHERE /?'. Hope this helps!

use dir:

the cd part changes you to the root of the drive, to ensure searching starts at the top of the hierarchy.

John TJohn T

Note that some things might be a little different for PowerShell:

Frustrating that it's not built-in as a simple command.

However, there are several solutions, one of which is a batch file.

Create a batch file (which.bat) as follows:

This looks in the local directory, will take a filename parameter with or without an extension, and return the first match from the current directory or in the PATH.

Then run it like which cmd.exe to find the cmd.exe that will execute if you type in cmd.

Windows Cannot Find Any .exe Files

b wb w

On windows you can use the free utility Everything search engine to search instantly for any file by full or partial name (if your hard disk is formatted in ntfs).

harrymcharrymc

Windows Cannot Find Jpg Message

If you just want which, the GnuWin32 project has a bunch of unix utils with individual installers.

Justin LoveJustin Love

In PowerShell

You can easily convert this into a Cmdlet.

Another way to accomplish this, as suggested in an edit:

If you just need the path to launch it, it's often better to use the start command. For example, you can use 'start chrome.exe' to start Chrom{e|ium}, regardless of where it is installed.

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