How do I execute .exe files without typing the extension?

A. Your computer knows the common extensions via the pathext environment variable. To view the extensions, go to a command prompt and type:

C:>set pathext

When you type in this environment variable, you'll see a list of extensions that your computer recognizes, similar to the following:

PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH

If your list doesn't look like this example, go to the command prompt and type:

set pathext=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH

You can also set this variable for all users on your machine by editing the registry:

You can also add new file extensions here so that you can execute those file types without having to type in the file extension.