Hi there
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 could potentially run on a 64 bit Windows 7 system. So I guess my question is Does a 64 bit system contain a system32 folder?
Be very grateful for any replies.
Windows 7 64 bit has a System32 folder.
Whether your file will still run, however, is a more complex problem. It might, and depends entirely on what it relies on; if it's relying on drivers in the wrong way, it will fail as 32 bit drivers just don't work on 64 bit systems.
The System32 folder in 64-bit Windows actually contains the 64-bit files, and 32-bit programs running under WOW64 would generally go looking in System32 for the 32-bit DLLs etc. that they can call - but they'll find the 64-bit ones instead. Therefore the OS redirects all 32-bit applications' requests for the System32 folder to the SysWOW64 folder, which contains 32-bit system files.
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.