AIR Native Process works on Mac, but not Windows - windows

Question

I'm building an AIR application with Flash CC, so that I can use Native Processes. Before I even got to integrating it into my full project, I created a small test project to see if it would work. I tried it in Windows and it didn't work. I switched over to Mac and got it to work there, though.
The Native Process is triggered by a key press. The file is published as a Windows installer, not an Air package. I have made sure to include extendedDesktop in the xml file. I have double checked the file paths. Are there any other reasons this wouldn't work?
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.filesystem.File;
import flash.events.KeyboardEvent;
import flash.desktop.NativeProcess;
import flash.desktop.NativeProcessStartupInfo;
public class Main extends MovieClip {
var exe:File = new File("C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe");
var nativeProcess:NativeProcess = new NativeProcess();
var nativeProcessStartupInfo:NativeProcessStartupInfo = new NativeProcessStartupInfo();
var args:Vector.<String> = new Vector.<String>();
public function startProcess(event:KeyboardEvent):void
{
if (event.keyCode == 65) {
nativeProcessStartupInfo.executable = exe;
args.push("C:/Users/Tristan/Documents/TVCR/airTestFile.rtf");
nativeProcessStartupInfo.arguments = args;
nativeProcess.start(nativeProcessStartupInfo);
}
}
}
}

Answer 1

How to output some debug information. The following code will show some messages if the keyboard events really trigger the handler method.
public function startProcess(event:KeyboardEvent):void
{
// LogText:TextField
LogText.appendText("\n\nKey Pressed: " + event.keyCode);
}
How to output and diagnose an exception:
try
{
nativeProcess.start(nativeProcessStartupInfo);
LogText.appendText("\n\nThe process has been started without exceptions.");
}
catch (fail:Error)
{
// LogText:TextField
LogText.appendText("\n\n" + fail.getStackTrace());
}

Answer 2

It seems that the file path I was using wasn't in the correct format.
C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe
should be
C:\\Windows\\System32\\notepad.exe

Answer 3

The file path for Windows has to use a double backslash "\" since a single backslash gets interpreted as an escape.
Something that's handy, especially if you need to build a path to an executable or your making something that's going to be Windows and Mac is to use File.separator since it will do "\" for Windows and "/" for Mac/Linux
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/filesystem/File.html#separator