Question

I know how to run an external application in C# System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(executableName); but what if the application I want to run has extension that is not recognizable by Windows as extension of an executable. In my case it is application.bin.

Answer 1

Key is to set the Process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute property to false prior to starting the process, e.g.:

System.Diagnostics.Process p = new System.Diagnostics.Process();
p.StartInfo.FileName = @"c:\tmp\test.bin";
p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute  = false;
p.Start();

This will start the process directly: instead of going through the “let’s try to figure out the executable for the specified file extension” shell logic, the file will be considered to be executable itself.

Another syntax to achieve the same result might be:

var processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo
{
    FileName = @"c:\tmp\test.bin",
    UseShellExecute = false
};
Process.Start(processStartInfo);