How do I resolve “%1 is not a valid Win32 application”?

Question

Environment:
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise 64bit, SP2
.NET framework is supposedly installed (2.0 SP2, 3.0 SP2, 3.5 SP1)

I say \"suppo

Answer 1

I had "%1 is not a valid Win32 application." error message because my PATH environment variable was messed up. Well, more specifically, the PATH itself had nothing wrong with it. Instead, I had accidentally created a file named "C:\Program" that was used instead of "C:\Program Files\" for path lookup. The accidental creation of "C:\Program" was a result of calling Notepad++ on the command line for C:\Program Files\test.txt (without quotation marks), so Notepad++ thought I was trying to edit a file called "C:\Program" and created the file for me.