PATH variable and quotation marks (windows)

The PATH variable doesn't ordinarily contain quotes; it uses semicolons as its delimiter. For example, here is my system's PATH definition, which includes folders with spaces:

%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Windows Performance Toolkit\

It seems that Windows can execute programs with "quoted" paths, but the DLL search routine can't handle them.

Ideally you should use:

set PATH=c:\app\bin;c:\app\runtime;%PATH%

Another workaround might be to launch the program from c:\app\runtime, eg:

cd /d C:\app\runtime
..\bin\app.exe

That may not even require modifying the PATH variable.