{"id":18415,"date":"2020-09-08T10:51:24","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T10:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.58.113.91\/blog\/?p=18415"},"modified":"2022-12-23T13:20:16","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T07:50:16","slug":"windows-cant-find-winword-excel-exe-cant-open-avast-avg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/windows-cant-find-winword-excel-exe-cant-open-avast-avg\/","title":{"rendered":"[Fix] Windows cannot find Winword.exe or Excel.exe — Can’t open Any Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you open Office programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc, nothing may happen (except for the screen flash) if you double-click the program shortcut. If you open the Office program’s folder and double-click the executable (e.g., winword.exe, excel.exe, powerpnt.exe, outlook.exe) directly, the following error(s) occur:<\/p>\n

Windows cannot find ‘C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\root\\Office16\\WINWORD.EXE’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.<\/div>\n
Windows cannot find ‘C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\root\\Office16\\EXCEL.EXE’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.<\/div>\n
Windows cannot find ‘C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\root\\Office16\\POWERPNT.EXE’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.<\/div>\n
Windows cannot find ‘C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\root\\Office16\\OUTLOOK.EXE’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.<\/div>\n

\"avast<\/p>\n

The result would be the same if you double-click on a .doc\/.docx, .xls\/.xlsx file.\u00a0Cleanly uninstalling and reinstalling Office also may not help. Also, the same error can happen when you attempt to open non-Office programs installed on your computer.<\/p>\n

Cause<\/h2>\n

This issue may be caused if you have used Avast Cleanup, AVG TuneUp, CCleaner Professional, or any other tweaking program on the computer. Avast Cleanup and AVG TuneUp programs have a feature called “sleep mode” wherein some of the resource-intensive programs are identified and put down to “sleep.”<\/p>\n

\"avast<\/p>\n

When a program is set to sleep mode using Avast or AVG TuneUp, a “Debugger” registry entry is added for that program. The debugger points to one of the following Avast or AVG TuneUp executables which blocks the selected program from running in the background.<\/p>\n

C:\\Program Files (x86)\\AVG\\TuneUp\\autoreactivator.exe\r\nC:\\Program Files\\AVG\\TuneUp\\autoreactivator.exe\r\nC:\\Program Files (x86)\\AVAST Software\\Avast Cleanup\\autoreactivator.exe\r\nC:\\Program Files\\AVAST Software\\Avast Cleanup\\autoreactivator.exe<\/pre>\n
Let’s say, using AVG or Avast, you activate the sleep mode for certain programs. Later, one of the following situations can cause your programs from launching.<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. After an AVG or Avast program update, if the path to autoreactivator.exe<\/code> changes, the applications which were put to sleep would fail to work.<\/li>\n
  2. You uninstall Avast Cleanup or AVG TuneUp software without first re-enabling the apps which were put into sleep mode.<\/li>\n
  3. Your Avast or AVG TuneUp license expires, but the blocked (sleep) programs are not automatically unblocked.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    To know more about the sleep mode feature in Avast Cleanup, check out their blog post at the following link:<\/p>\n
    A much-needed wake-up call: \u201cSleep Mode\u201d for slow PCs:\r\nhttps:\/\/blog.avast.com\/a-much-needed-wake-up-call-sleep-modefor-slow-pcs<\/pre>\n
    \n
    \"tipsThe debugger<\/code> registry value is used to redirect a program to another program. For instance, Microsoft Sysinternals Process Monitor replaces Task Manager in the same way. We used the debugger technique to replace Notepad with Notepad++<\/a> in one of our previous articles.<\/em><\/p>\n
    \n
    RELATED:<\/strong>\u00a0Error “Windows cannot find taskmgr.exe” Opening Task Manager<\/a><\/p>\n
    [Fix] Windows cannot find Winword.exe or Excel.exe<\/h2>\n
    To fix the Windows cannot find program.exe<\/strong> error when opening Office or other programs, follow one of these methods:<\/p>\n
    Option 1: Re-enable programs that were put to Sleep<\/h3>\n
    If you’re still using the AVG TuneUp or Avast Cleanup program, ensure you re-enable the programs that were put into sleep mode earlier. This would release the debugger for those installed programs.<\/p>\n
    Open AVG TuneUp or AVAST Cleanup program and activate all sleeping programs. However, if you want to place those programs to sleep mode again, you can set them back to sleep mode after that. This creates new entries for the reactivator in the registry.<\/p>\n