Looking for a specific exe

[SupahVee]

I want to create a launcher for a game, and I want my application to look into C:\Games (for example) for its executable (to detect it). I can do this by looking for the name, but what if the user renamed it? There must be an easier way.

[jA_cOp]

You should be more specific. What do you mean by "launcher", and what does it do? Any reason you can't use a shortcut? And where will this "launcher" be located?

[ZeekyHBomb]

You could go with finding each *.exe, check the filesize and calculate the hash of its contents.
But why should the user rename the file?

[cpf]

In addition:

It's too much work trying to detect if the user renamed it, 99% of the PC world knows that if you rename something and it stops working, you should rename it back.

[ltkerr0r]

[QUOTE=SupahVee;19821705]I want to create a launcher for a game, and I want my application to look into C:\Games (for example) for its executable (to detect it). I can do this by looking for the name, but what if the user renamed it? There must be an easier way.[/QUOTE]
If the game exe has the original filename, and you are just looking for the install dir (The user didn't install it into the default location such as "C:\Program Files\EA Games\drm-with-bonus-game.exe"), you might be able to get the install dir from the registry(windows).
[QUOTE][HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III]
"InstallPath"="E:\\Games\\Warcraft III"
"Program"="E:\\Games\\Warcraft III\\Warcraft III.exe"[/QUOTE]

Then to find a renamed exe you can check hashes to find a specific exe(exact version) or you can probably just load resources to find the general exe
[QUOTE]1 VERSIONINFO
FILEVERSION 1,0,0,1
PRODUCTVERSION 1,0,0,1
FILEOS 0x40004
FILETYPE 0x1
{
BLOCK "StringFileInfo"
{
BLOCK "040904b0"
{
VALUE "Comments", ""
VALUE "CompanyName", "Blizzard Entertainment"
VALUE "FileDescription", "Warcraft III"
VALUE "FileVersion", "1, 0, 0, 1"
VALUE "InternalName", "Warcrarft III"
VALUE "LegalCopyright", "Copyright © 2002"
VALUE "LegalTrademarks", ""
VALUE "OriginalFilename", "Warcraft III.exe"
VALUE "PrivateBuild", ""
VALUE "ProductName", "Warcraft III"
VALUE "ProductVersion", "1, 0, 0, 1"
VALUE "SpecialBuild", ""
}
}

BLOCK "VarFileInfo"
{
VALUE "Translation", 0x0409 0x04B0
}
}[/QUOTE]
But users really shouldn't be renaming exes of installed applications/games.