Launching Mathematica on Windows

Launching Mathematica Locally
To run Mathematica using a network license, both the client machine and the license server must be on the network, and MathLM must be running.
If you do not have a MathLM license server, you will need to activate your copy of Mathematica. Please see "Activating Mathematica" for more information.

To Launch Mathematica:

From the Start menu, choose Programs ▶ Wolfram Mathematica ▶ Mathematica 12.
Alternatively, you can open an Explorer window, go to the Program Files\Wolfram Research\Mathematica\12.0 directory, and double-click the Mathematica icon.

To Launch Only the Mathematica Kernel:

From the Start menu, choose Programs ▶ Wolfram Mathematica ▶ Mathematica 12 Kernel.
Alternatively, you can open an Explorer window, go to the Program Files\Wolfram Research\Mathematica\12.0 directory, and double-click the MathKernel icon.

To Launch the Mathematica Kernel inside a Command Prompt Window:

Open a command prompt window and change directory to the top-level Mathematica installation directory. Type .\math and press Enter.