I run wine on my gentoo system. For the most part it usually works quite well. One strange problem I have been having however is that some executables, not all of them, don't work unless I run open it through a shell.

I have some binaries in my menus. I also have pcmanfm set to execute the command "wine %f when a .exe file is clicked on. I'd say this works 80% of the time. Some programs don't seem to work though. Either nothing happens or a get some strange unhelpful dialog saying I'm missing files.

Its not a huge inconvenience, but I like to put more frequently used software in the menus. It seems like a permissions problem, but I don't see what the permissions would be any different. Any ideas?

A couple of thoughts.

If the apps are installed in ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/abc.exe, those gaps in the path will cause a non app start. Double clicking in a file mgr to launch wine for the .exe won't work. It will fail with
It would have to be
You can make a symlink to it and then launch the link.
Then launch the abc.exe in your home dir with wine.

Or a menu item would need to be for example.

I generally use escape codes instead, but I will try quotes and see if that makes a difference