Why I can't run the Snipping Tool from WPF?

Question

I've created a WPF Window with a lot of buttons, each of them run a different program. To run MS Word, for instance, I used:

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\WINWORD.EXE");

But when I try to run the Windows 7 Snipping Tool the same way it doesn't work. It was supposed to be like this:

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("C:\\Windows\\System32\\SnippingTool.exe");

I'm sure the path is correct, but always appears a message saying the file wasn't found. I would like to know why is this happening.

Important: I use Windows 7 64 bits.

Answer 1

Use this:

// if the build platform of this app is x86 use C:\windows\sysnative
if(!Environment.Is64BitProcess) 
   System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("C:\\Windows\\sysnative\\SnippingTool.exe");
else
   System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("C:\\Windows\\system32\\SnippingTool.exe");

The problem is in your build platform (x86) and the automatic redirection of the folder C:\\Windows\\System32\\ on 64-bit OS'es.

Basically, for several reasons, in vista/windows 7 64-bit OS'es when a 32 bit application try to access to C:\\Windows\\System32\\ it is automatically redirected to the folder called C:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\ . Hence, you cannot start snippingtool.exe because it is not present in that folder.

The only way is to use C:\\Windows\\sysnative\\ and bypass the redirection.

Answer 2

My psychic debugger tells me that you are running a 32-bit program on a 64-bit version of Windows, so your call to %WINDIR% ( C:\\Windows ) is actually being re-routed to C:\\Windows\\SysWOW64 .

Use the environment variable instead of hard-coding paths to directories that may move around depending on the environment and/or Windows version..

Answer 3

You should use an environment variable instead. Likely you are running it on a 64 bit system and C:\\Windows\\System32\\ is getting redirected.