Windows; Run programs, without them being in PATH.

Right, this is rather a question than an issue.

I'm just curious; How come I can start for example firefox and notepad++ without supplying their absolute path from Start->Run, without their paths being in my PATH variable? My OS (for now) is Windows Seven Professional x64

It's probably because they are in the index.

Er, not that I know anything about windows, but isn't an index of all 'installed' programs kept in the registry?

If you place the application in the WINDIR\SystemRoot you can Run it without supplying the absolute path.

Point being you could always check there.

Ellipsis, that's mainly because %SystemRoot%\System32 and further directories of great importance for the operating system is allready predefined inside your system wide PATH variable.

I don't think it's the index, you see. Of all the progams I have installed, the only programs I can start bu this method is exactly Firefox and Notepad++, not Eclipse, not Spotify, not Visual Studio, nothing else.

[edit]

Although, there is the possibility that Notepad++ and Firefox are the only applications on my computer that actually utilizes the Windows Indexing Service, highly unlikely though since not even Windows Live Mail works this method.

root_op wrote: Although, there is the possibility that Notepad++ and Firefox are the only applications on my computer that actually utilizes the Windows Indexing Service, highly unlikely though since not even Windows Live Mail works this method. Or maybe you just don't know the real name of the application. For example, if you want to open paint from the run dialogue you type "mspaint", not "paint". And I think only some programs are indexed.

Any program installed in windows is held in the registry under: "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths" Ynori hit it right on the head, If you don't know the actually programs run ID it won't open. Example: Wordpad is held under write.exe. So you need to type "write" to open it. You can check the installed paths through the registry point I posted and if a program is not listed there you can add a subkey and it's string variable with the paths to where it's located. (check your registry for examples). Not sure why you would go through the trouble of typing in the run box when you can just assign a Hotkey and open it faster. Start > Programs > Rt click on the exe > properties > shortcut > shortcutkey: then just press any letter or number to apply (It auto adds Ctrl,Alt).

Right on the spot korg! The entries in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\App Paths can be loaded through run without them being in the actual PATH!

That's truly something worth remembering, thank you HBH for clearing this out!