Question

I need to get the path to the native (rather than the WOW) program files directory from a 32bit WOW process.

When I pass CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILES (or CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILESX86) into SHGetSpecialFolderPath it returns the WOW (Program Files (x86)) folder path.

I’d prefer to avoid using an environment variable if possible.

I want to compare some values I read from the registry, if the values point to the path of either the WOW or native version of my app then my code does something, if not it does something else. To figure out where the native and WOW versions of my app are expected to be I need to get the paths to ‘Program Files (x86)’ and ‘Program Files’.

Answer 1

I appreciate all the help and, especially, the warnings in this thread. However, I really do need this path and this is how I got it in the end:

(error checking removed for clarity, use at your own risk, etc)

WCHAR szNativeProgramFilesFolder[MAX_PATH]; ExpandEnvironmentStrings(L'%ProgramW6432%',                         szNativeProgramFilesFolder,                         ARRAYSIZE(szNativeProgramFilesFolder);