Executing symbolic link to exe - "The specified path does not exist"

Since the only other answer doesn't really "fix" the issue, just acknowledges it, I think it's worth saying I had this same issue, and discovered the problem.

The issue for me was relative vs absolute symlinks. I use Link Shell Extension.

When creating absolute symlinks, Explorer works fine. When creating relative links, Explorer chokes on them.

I can only guess that this is somehow related to how Explorer calculates the working directory? Maybe some slash problems?

_{(Note that on Win7 x64, at least, you may have to open LSEConfig.exe after installing the extension, and toggle Absolute and then Relative to get it to make relative links, as the default config is somewhat unpredictable, sometimes relative, sometimes absolute.)}

Works for me....

D:\Develop\DateTouch>mklink foo.exe TouchDate.exe
symbolic link created for foo.exe <<===>> TouchDate.exe

D:\Develop\DateTouch>foo.exe

How are you creating the symbolic link?

Edit:

• Windows 7 Service Pack 1 applied?
• 64-bit?

Edit: i see an issue:

C:\Users\ian.AVATOPIA>mklink foo4.exe c:\asdfasdf\adfasdf.exe
symbolic link created for foo4.exe <<===>> c:\asdfasdf\adfasdf.exe

So make sure your file actually exists.

Edit: i think i see your issue:

• it launches fine from a command prompt
• it fails to launch from Windows Explorer:

Quite a necro, but I still had the same question and this was the only one addressing this issue.

But here is my workaround! If "C:\app.exe" gives you trouble for not launching because of explorer, just create "app.bat", with "C:\app.exe" as contents. Launching app.bat will launch app.exe from the command line.

The problem is now that it executes it from the location of app.exe, so relative links in the .exe might give trouble now, only simple programs work. You can still make a .bat that goes to the target location and then runs the .exe, but we're miles from "just a symlink" then.