# .exe What's that mean?



## MrNotkewl13 (Mar 20, 2006)

No, it's not that I don't know what .exe means (executable)... I run a Macintosh OSX Tiger 10.Something... I have decent exposure to the Terminal in Mac, the Konsole in Linux, and MS-DOS via Windows XP and/or Vista. 

I tried to run a .exe file on my Mac, and it said it didn't know what application to use to open it and asked if I wanted to "Choose Application". What do I do?


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## emoxley (Jan 6, 2004)

An .exe file isn't going to run on a mac, unless you have Virtual PC on it, or unless you're one of the hacker guys that got windows running on a mac.


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## MrNotkewl13 (Mar 20, 2006)

Ok, you have no Idea how dumb I feel right now... I've helped people with much worse problems than this (not here) and now I've gone and made a fool of myself... thanks for the info...


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## emoxley (Jan 6, 2004)

No you haven't made a fool of yourself. You just didn't realize..........
Virtual PC is a windows emulator, and you can use .exe files in it. But they run pretty slow, I hear. I've never tried it. Then there's the recent story of the hackers that got windows to run on the new intel Mac. That's a whole 'nuther thing! 

Under normal circumstances, macs won't run .exe files, and windows won't run mac files. It's the nature of both beasts...........


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## VegasACF (May 27, 2005)

An .exe is just an executable archive (hence the abbreviation "exe" for _exe_cutable). How fast or slow it runs in VPC will depend entirely upon what resides inside the archive. What resides inside the archive may be something as simple as a video clip or something as Windows-specific as an installation program. All the ".exe" means is that you double click on it and it executes a series of commands, whether it's to launch an installer, open Windows Media Player, etc.


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## tedwinder (Sep 7, 2005)

yeah, i had problems with that - only works with windows :down:


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