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Windows 64 bit

Author: BitRock Support       Date: September 23, 2009 18:31       Tags: Installation
Windows
Native Packaging

When a 32-bit Windows application is executed on Windows 64-bits, it runs under the wow64 subsystem (WoW stands for 'Windows on Windows'). This has the side-effect that access to certain parts of the registry and filesystem gets transparently redirected. This is irrelevant for most applications, but because InstallBuilder itself is a 32bit application, if you are using it to install a 64-bit application you need to tell InstallBuilder to disable these redirections. You can do so with this settings:

<project>
 ...
 <windows64bitMode>1</windows64bitMode>
 ...
</project>

The above is equivalent to individually disable filesystem redirection with

<project>
 ...
 <initializationActionList>
    <wow64FsRedirection action="disable" /> 
 </initializationActionList>
 ...
</project>

and accessing the 64bit registry using built-in actions such as <registryGet> with the option wowMode="64"

Please note that for installing 32-bit applications on Windows 64-bit, in most cases these changes are not necessary.