Opening programs without using an exe file

[Jondot]

Does anyone know any other way of running a program on windows xp without using an exe file?


Help is much apppreciated.

Jon

 

[donbenni]

Need a little more than that to help really.

You can run a program as a .bat file, or a .c file or a .java file or any other number of program extensions.

What are you trying to do? Sounds ominous.

 

[Jondot]

Open a portable web browser such as firefox, but not with an exe file.

 

[chinko]

ah i wonder too. i want to use Firefox in college but the ****ty RM machine things block executable files from being run

 

[Jondot]

ah i wonder too. i want to use Firefox in college but the ****ty RM machine things block executable files from being run

That's the idea. I wondered if there was another way to run them without the software restriction policy from getting involved.

 

[ExigeEvan]

But wouldn't it be abit risky if you were planning to do it in school?

Even with no malicious ideas, the school would suspect why you went to all the trouble.

 

[amp88]

You could try a little Java program to launch it, something along the lines of

public class TotallyInnocentProgramNotTryingToLaunchExesOrAnything
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        Runtime.getRuntime().exec("Z:\My Thumb Drive\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe");
    }
}

edit: I doubt this would work though

 

[Jondot]

Does that code work?

Edit, just found out

 

[amp88]

Does that code work?

Edit, just found out

Well, it does work (in that it can be used to launch exe files), but I think all it would do would be to pass the command to the OS, and you'd still not be able to run it due to security restrictions.

ExigeExcel is right though, there's not really a point to this, you'd be doing something wrong just to run Firefox over IE (or to use your instant messengers)

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/Runtime.html#exec(java.lang.String)

 

[amp88]

I've uploaded a couple of files just to show that what I said in my last post does work.

The contained code is:

public class FileRunner
{
	public static void main(String[] args)
	{
		try
		{
			Runtime.getRuntime().exec("C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\winmine.exe");
		}
		catch(Exception e)
		{
			System.out.println(e);
		}
	}
}

What this code does is to launch Minesweeper (It should only work on 2000 and XP though, as 95 and 98 had different paths for Minesweeper). To run the program, extract the contents of the archive and double click the "Run Minesweeper.bat" file.

Note: A lot of malicious code can be executed on your machine when someone gets you to try and run an exe file or a bat file they've made. Damage can be done this way, deleting files from your hard drive or doing severe damage to your PC. The bat file I've created and the small Java program I've created are harmless, they will do no damage to your PC or your files. If you don't believe or trust me, do not run the program!