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I downloaded Adobe Shockwave Player, but when trying to launch a downloaded Shockwave game, it opens a DOS dialog box as a text file instead. I have just purchased a new iMac from being a lifelong Windows user. What am I doing wrong??? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.0.x)
What am I doing wrong???
Possibly nothing. Is it just this one game or all such games? If all, are they all from the same web site? Please provide a link (or links) to see if your problem can be verified.
It is all games... 😟 The website is www.shockwave.com and I am downloading hidden object games. When my download is complete, it has the .exe extension but says the file type is "document". I have tried opening with Quick Player also with no success. Thanks so much!!
You can start by reading this:
http://www.shockwave.com/help/faq_shockwave.jsp
On a mac you'll need adobe shockwave and flash players. It's all in the FAQ. Delete the .exe files, they are for a windows PC probably.
Yes, I read their FAQ. As I mentioned originally, I installed both of those players. I also rebooted the computer, deleted the original downloads, and downloaded again. No luck. The shockwave and flash players were for mac, installed fine, so I don't know what the problem is.
It is all games... 😟 The website is www.shockwave.com and I am downloading hidden object games. When my download is complete, it has the .exe extension but says the file type is "document". I have tried opening with Quick Player also with no success. Thanks so much!!
Those .exe files are self extracting (I assume) windows files. You cannot run them directly on your mac except by using windows under BootCamp or running wndows in a virtualizer like Parallels, VMWare, etc.
It may very well be that if those files are self extracting then they produce shockwave files. I don't know. But there isn't much you can do with them as .exe files directly on your mac.
Many of those games allow you to play directly in your browser so that may be your ownly choice if you want to use that web site.
Oh dear, I suspected that .exe files are strictly windows-based, but it helps having confirmation. Forgive me, but I'm not an IT person, so this may sound like a stupid question. When a game is downloaded from a website, how does it know to download in PC or Mac format? Any file I've ever downloaded, if it was supported on both platforms, there would be the version to choose from. Unless Shockwave/Flash determines that? Maybe I should be asking Shockwave that question? I do really appreciate the time & help. Mac is amazing and wish I would have converted sooner! Many thanks.
They support the Mac so you may need to look around and ensure you are getting a mac version to download. Most websites can query the OS to see what it is, but you may need to get involved by looking for the right one. What web browser do you use? maybe it is messing things up, try safari and see what happens.
Generally you can tell the kind of file by its file extension like in this case, .exe. Some are obvious like .txt (text) and some are not so obvious. There are web sites specifically for looking up file extensions like FileInfo.com. And there are local ways too, for example, seeing what the finder thinks it should open for a file via Get Info. It's not always correct (and sometimes gets confused) but it may work. There are other ways as well using terminal which I won't go into here.
Stuff written it flash is something like pdf, i.e., platform independent. Generally any flash player can play flash as most pdf viewers can read basic pdf (there's some pdf files Adobe Reader can handle that Preview can't).
As I said for your situation above, that .exe file may be a self-extracting file which produces the flash game which potentially you could run. But since you can't directly run the .exe it's academic. .exe is an example of a executable file. Executable are not platform independent because they have a file format and machine code dependent upon the OS in which they run.
I just recently bought a Mac after being a Windows user for years. I also use Shockwave and I found out that even though you can play games on their website, you cannot download the games onto Macs. They responded to an email that I sent them asking if there are games that can be downloaded onto Macs or if the download games are only for Windows computer. Shockwave support stated that even though you can play the games on the website with a Mac, you cannot download them to a Mac and play them. I have also asked them in an email why there are no available downloads for Macs, but I never received an answer to that question. My solution was to keep my old Windows laptop and just use it to download the games that I want to play. As it was also pointed out by X423424X you could always use Bootcamp to download and play Windows games. Hope this helps.
Can't launch Shockwave games?
