Windows is searching for program.exe

[alex-griffiths]

• Version: ^22.7.0

• Electron Version: ^8.0.0
• Electron Type (current, beta, nightly): current

• Target: NSIS

Running my installer I get a dialog that pops up that says "Windows is searching for Quotation Assistant.exe.." and it gives me the option to try and browse and find the exe myself.

If I let it continue trying to find the executable, it always fails.

I can browse and select the executable that is located at dist/win-unpacked/Quotation Assistant.exe and that will work until I try run the installer again and it fails.

In my AppData/Local/Programs/quotation-assistant folder, there is only the uninstaller present. I checked another program that I use electron-builder for, and it's got a lot more files present (what looks like to be the contents of the win-unpacked folder).

I've done some searching already trying to fix this issue, and I've found the following issue: #4057 . That seems to be the closest I can find to what I'm getting. The solutions proposed in that issue do not work for me.

My current build settings:

	"build": {
		"appId": "quotation-assistant",
		"productName": "Quotation Assistant",
		"compression": "store",
		"asar": true,
		"win": {
			"target": {
				"target": "NSIS",
				"arch": [
					"x64",
					"arm64"
				]
			},
			"icon": "app/static/icons/win/icon.ico"
		},
		"files": [
			"!dist/*",
			"!dummy_root/*",
			"!screens/*",
			"!app/sass/*",
			"!.sass-cache/*",
			"!.vscode/*",
			"!package-lock.json",
			"!*.rb",
			"!*.sql"
		]
	},

This issue appears to occur on multiple computers as well, not just the computer I'm building on.

[alex-griffiths]

As a bit of an update to this.

The same issue has been occurring on three different computers. This is making me think that it's perhaps a config issue that I'm just not seeing.

[xuzhaobin]

I have the same problem.Try running the installation package with administrator privileges.

[alex-griffiths]

Running as administrator (both building and the installation) doesn't seem to work.

I think it's probably got something to do mainly with this block of package.json

"target": {
	"target": "NSIS",
	"arch": [
		"x64",
		"arm64"
	]
},

Which I pulled from the docs I think (it's been a while and I originally did it for another project) so that I could build on ARM.

[matthiasg]

@alex-griffiths I have the exact same issue. Building with just arm64 doesn't work either (complaining about not finding files).

[matthiasg]

this is related to #5461

[alex-griffiths]

This doesn't appear to have been an issue on version 20.40.x which I had used on another project. So somewhere between then and ^22.7.0 something has gone awry.

@develar Do you have any idea what might have changed between these versions.

The only notable change I see as an end-user is that the build command was replaced by the electron-builder command.

[alex-griffiths]

Its been about 2 months since I made this issue, and there doesn't really seem to be any activity. I'm not sure who else to ping other than @develar.

Would be amazing if he or another community member with a bit more insight into this issue could respond.

[stale]

Is this still relevant? If so, what is blocking it? Is there anything you can do to help move it forward?

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs.

[Tariqu]

Hi @alex-griffiths I am facing the same exact same issue. I also notice that this is happening after upgrading electron-builder version to 22.11.7 please any member of this community can help us then it will be a highly appriciable

[alex-griffiths]

@Tariqu I've sinced stopped using this project as I've moved on to other things, but it does seem that this issue isn't a priority at the moment. Best of luck trying to resolve this.

[ravi-poonia-7]

I am also facing the same issue

[Echo4F]

Can anyone be of help?

[erasmosoares]

I also facing the same issue only on a windows build, looks fine for the dmg btw.

[bradjasper]

I had this issue and resolved it by switching the build target, in my case to ia32

This is my build:win command in package.json

npm run build && electron-builder --win --config --ia32

I am compiling for Windows on a Mac M1, and the default build was producing arm64 builds.

[EarthsWormz]

I had this issue, My error was that my project folder was over 10gb, after deleting unused packaged builds i managed to get my project down to ~500mb. Now the project is smaller i have no issues building and installing.

[jehugaleahsa]

In my case, this issue was caused by adding .exe and .dll to the list of preCompressedFileExtensions under the nsis option. It really doesn't make any sense, since the documentation says this:

Applicable only for extraResources and extraFiles files.

Somehow this was influencing my results and there's no clear indication why,