Question

How I can find path for installed application from VB.net if i know the name of application exe file?
Thanks!

Answer 1

If you mean any arbitrary application (not the one that’s running), there’s really no other way than to search the hard drive for that .exe’s file name.

If you can at least be confident that it’s in the Program Files folder, this should give you what you need.

string[] files = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(
            Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFiles), 
            "Yourexe.exe", System.IO.SearchOption.AllDirectories);

This will give you back a string array of the paths to all files that have that name within the Program Files folder.

If you can’t assume that it’s in Program Files, then you can substitute any directory.

string rootDirectory = System.IO.DriveInfo.GetDrives()[0].RootDirectory.FullName;

string[] files = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(
            rootDirectory, 
            "Yourexe.exe", System.IO.SearchOption.AllDirectories);

That will search the entire primary hard drive. Again, you can substitute any root path you like for the rootDirectory variable.

It should be noted that these options are relatively slow; there is, unfortunately, no fast way to accomplish this without knowing more information about where it might be installed.