Lack of ability to open .exe files

I just want to throw this question out here. Whenever someone posts saying they can't open a file with the extension .exe, the responses say to download hijackthis. How can someone download a file that has .exe attached to it if the virus won't let them open it?
I have mistakenly posted how I got past this problem in a couple threads, and I apologize, it won't happen again.
But I just wanted to post this question, because to me it is confusing.

Hello,

We have a workaround to open HijackThis. We will ask the members to rename the exe to scr which will then be able to open.

Oh, ok, thank you. I also have another trick to getting into files with an .exe extension. I won't post it unless you tell me it is ok to do so. Maybe if you try it and it works for you, than you can post it.

Hello.
You can post your tip if you want to, but we also have things that work around this.

com/scr/vbs work and we can use some tools that use those extension on users.