can't start win32diskimager

Sounds like you're not extracting the program, but trying to execute without extracting. The program needs to be extracted from the zip file in order to be able to do things like find the included libraries.

I think Jzip automatically extracts. I use it regularly and can just click on the exe. file and things work. I thought maybe image writer needed to be in its own folder and then extracted but that isn't working either. I read some other posts with the same problem but the answer wasn't clear. I have formatted the sd card using the same extraction program and that part is finished. Don't know what to do next.

Whats the path to the extracted imagewriter?

/

It just opens in a window with jzip. I tried copying it all to a file in programs but it didn't help. It seemed from another post that it should be in the programs folder.

Copy the entire contents of the zip file to a folder, any folder. As long as everything in the zip file is extracted and can be accessed directly via Windows Explorer, it will work. It won't work if executed from within a zip file as it can't use the standard Windows calls to load the included libraries (*.dll).

If you open Windows Explorer and go to where win32diskimager-v0.8-binary.zip is saved, you should be able to right-click on it and see a menu for manipulating the file. There should be a menu option to extract contents. Extract everything, then try running the exe.

Oh, and as to the app belonging in the "Program Files" directory, eventually we will have an installer that will put it there and add icons to the start menu. But it will run anywhere, so long as it can find the dll files that it ships with.