System32 Folder on a 64-bit system

Question

I have a cmd file that runs on 32 bit Vista system.

I notice that the code has references to the system32 driver folder.

I\'m wondering whether the code coul

Answer 1

Windows has a technology called WoW 64 (Windows-on-Windows 64-bit) that allows 32-bit applications (even compiled ones written in C/C++, etc.) to run on 64-bit Windows.

In addition to the System32 folder, a 64-bit Windows installation has a SysWow64 folder that has 32-bit versions of the files that you'll find in System32.

To be clear, references to System32 get redirected when running from a 32-bit process (unless the process disables this redirection, which is possible). As a result, if you have a .CMD file that references System32, it's actually going to read from the SysWow64 directory.