Question

When trying to return the path to system32 so I can launch notepad from an application I am developing, I do the following:

if (SHGetSpecialFolderPath(
        GetSafeHwnd(),
        lSystemPath,
        CSIDL_SYSTEM,
        TRUE ) )
    {
        lSystemPathCString = lSystemPath;
        if (lSystemPathCString.ReverseFind('\\') != lSystemPathCString.GetLength() - 1)
            lSystemPathCString += "\\";
    }

However…. in SHGetSpecialFolderPath(), using CSIDL_SYSTEM ends up setting lSystemPath to C:\Windows\system32, whereas using CIDSL_SYSTEMX86 sets lSystemPath to C:\Windows\SysWOW64. Is this the correct behavior? It seems like those identifiers are switched, and I want to make sure that this is not merely strange behavior on my system.

Thanks in advance for any help in clearing this up.

Answer 1

C:\Windows\SysWOW64 contains 32-bit binaries (even though it has 64 in its name): this is correct behaviour.

WOW64 stands for Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit.