CMD.exe and Powershell.exe cannot generate ssh keys using ssh-keygen

Question

Hope you can help me out here. I've been playing around with some SSH authentication. I have no idea why this is happening, but now when I run a simple ssh-keygen command I get a response saying Access is denied. in addition to a pop-up that reads "This app can't run on your PC. To find a version for your PC, check with the software publisher".

I then tried running the ssh-keygen command in Poweshell (as admin and as regular user) and got the following:

    Program 'ssh-keygen.exe' failed to run: The specified executable is not a valid application for this OS platform.At
    line:1 char:1
    + ssh-keygen
    + ~~~~~~~~~~.
    At line:1 char:1
    + ssh-keygen
    + ~~~~~~~~~~
        + CategoryInfo          : ResourceUnavailable: (:) [], ApplicationFailedException
        + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandFailed

However, using ssh -V shows that it is installed:

OpenSSH_for_Windows_8.1p1, LibreSSL 3.0.2

I can still SSH fine into other devices, if that's of any relevant.

Any help would be very much appreciated here!

Answer 1

This isn't a PowerShell problem.

Do you have permission on the EXE to execute it?
Is the EXE file blocked (check its properties)?

What version of Windows are you running? Is it 32- or 64-bit?
Do you have the location of the executable in your PATH environment variable?

Use one of the methods in this line to determine the "bit-ness" of the EXE: check-if-program-is-32-bit-or-64-bit-on-windows-10

Answer 2

From an admin command prompt, use the where.exe program to verify that you are trying to execute C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\ssh-keygen.exe.

Or just run the program directly.

Answer 3

@MotoX80 thanks for that. That seems to work!

So now I do wonder, how can I change the path of the ssh-keygen command to route back to the system32\openssh\ssh-keygen.exe executable?

Answer 4

how can I change the path

Did the where command find a different ssh-keygen executable in some other folder or is the OpenSSh folder missing from the path environment variable?