“File not found” error launching system32\winsat.exe using Process.Start()

Question

I\'m trying to run the Windows System Assessment Tool (winsat.exe) using the following code:

System.Diagnostics.Process WinSPro =
    new System.Diagnostics.         


        

Answer 1

winsat.exe is redirected using Windows-on Windows 64-bit redirection. What's happening is that your launch request (from a 32-bit process) is being redirected to %windir%\SysWOW64\winsat.exe. Since there's no 32-bit version of this particular executable on 64-bit installs, the launch fails. To bypass this process and allow your 32-bit process to access the native (64-bit) path, you can reference %windir%\sysnative instead:

Process WinSPro = new Process();
ProcessStartInfo WinSSInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
WinSSInfo.FileName = @"c:\windows\sysnative\winsat.exe";
WinSPro.StartInfo = WinSSInfo;
WinSPro.Start();

Alternatively, if you build your program as x64, you can leave the path as c:\windows\system32.

Note that it's best to use Environment.GetFolderPath to get the path to the windows directory, just in case the OS is installed in a non-standard location:

WinSSInfo.FileName = Path.Combine(
    Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Windows),
    @"sysnative\winsat.exe");

Answer 2

Based on Simon MᶜKenzie's answer, and the link he provided (thanks to soyuz for his comment) I wrote method that should work in either cases (to just copy/paste the code):

public static string GetSystem32DirectoryPath()
{
    string winDir = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Windows);
    string system32Directory = Path.Combine(winDir, "system32");
    if (Environment.Is64BitOperatingSystem && !Environment.Is64BitProcess)
    {
        // For 32-bit processes on 64-bit systems, %windir%\system32 folder
        // can only be accessed by specifying %windir%\sysnative folder.
        system32Directory = Path.Combine(winDir, "sysnative");
    }
    return system32Directory;
}

and code to launch the process:

var pi = new ProcessStartInfo
{
    FileName = Path.Combine(GetSystem32DirectoryPath(), "winsat.exe"),
    CreateNoWindow = true,
    UseShellExecute = false
};
Process.Start(pi);