The most common reason why a command which runs an executable program works on the command line, but not in a batch script, is that, in the script, prior to the line containing the problem command, the user has created a variable %path%. It might seem a handy name for a variable that holds, well, a path. The problem is that this variable name is used by Windows to hold a semicolon-separated list of folders which are searched when an executable is called. It is a system variable. If you have redefined it, then all executables (e.g. .exe, .bat, .vbs, etc) that Windows uses, will not be found, and the script will fail with exactly this message, where xxx is the program or file that is expected:
'xxx' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
This can be confusing because commands which are internal to the cmd environment (dir, cls, set, copy, move, etc) (list here) still continue to work in this situation.
You can debug a script where this is suspected by inserting the path
command immediately before a problem line. The Windows path variable starts with these folders, and may be extended as programs are installed:
%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem
wsl.exe
instead? – lol Nov 12 '19 at 16:51