Open Command Window in Windows x64 mode

Question

I have an application which is installed in x64. I want to execute this EXE in x64 command prompt.

CASE 1:

If I open the command prompt man

Answer 1

It looks like you are using a 32-bit executable to run the batch file with elevated privileges. In this case the batch file is executed with 32-bit cmd.exe in %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64, see the Microsoft articles:

• File System Redirector
• WOW64 Implementation Details
• Registry Keys Affected by WOW64

As the batch file is already executed with elevated privileges and just needs to be processed by 64-bit cmd.exe on 64-bit Windows, here are the few lines to make sure that the batch file is executed by 64-bit Windows command processor on 64-bit Windows.

@echo off
if "%ProgramFiles(x86)%" == "" goto MainCode
if not exist %SystemRoot%\Sysnative\cmd.exe goto MainCode
%SystemRoot%\Sysnative\cmd.exe /C "%~f0" %*
goto :EOF

:MainCode
set Program
pause

Put your main batch code below the label :Maincode.

The first IF condition jumps to main batch code if the batch file is running on 32-bit Windows where the environment variable ProgramFiles(x86) does not exist at all.

The second IF condition only executed on 64-bit Windows jumps to main batch code if it cannot find the file %SystemRoot%\Sysnative\cmd.exe because the batch file is processed already by 64-bit cmd.exe.

Sysnative is not a directory. It is a special alias which exists only when 32-bit environment is active on 64-bit Windows. For that reason it is only possible to use, for example, the condition if exist %SystemRoot%\Sysnative\* to check for existence of any file, but not the condition if exist %SystemRoot%\Sysnative to check for existence of the directory because of Sysnative is not a directory.

For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.

• cmd /?
• echo /?
• goto /?
• if /?
• pause /?
• set /?