Came across an odd one with Windows today (ugh, already hitting "fun" issues again with this OS), and I can't find a good reason why this is an issue.

An unquoted path caused a script to create a file called Program in the C:\ drive. When this occurred, and Windows 7 rebooted, it warned about this and recommended renaming the file. When I didn't, I noticed a 3rd party service wasn't running. Attempting to start it lead to Error 193:0xc1 (Not a valid Win32 application).

My first though is that it's due to the legacy 8.3 filenames, and C:\Program clashing with Program Files (Progra~1 normally in 8.3 format). But that doesn't fully make sense to me, since program is just 7 characters, and shouldn't have resulted in a ~1,~2 situation.

Any ideas why C:\Program can tank some programs?