Extract to c:\windows\system32
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Why does PowerArchiver 2010 actually extract to c:\windows\syswow64\ <subdir>when I try to extract to c:\windows\system32\ <subdir>in the 64-bit version of Windows Vista? I need to extract an updated DefragFS.sys to the c:\windows\system32\drivers from PerfectDisk tech support.</subdir></subdir>
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This is because by default 32-bit programs cannot access the real system32 directory (which holds 64-bit binaries on a Win64 system). There are some APIs that will let a 32-bit program override this default, but that will require the PA developers to work to add specific support for this (which I think they should probably do, but I certainly can’t speak for them).
However, I just recently learned that you can manually override this behavior by having the 32-bit program navigate to the \Windows\SysNative directory - this is a link to the true, 64-bit system32 directory that doesn’t get redirected to SysWOW64.
See here for details on why and how this all works (also with a pointer to APIs if the PA team is interested in baking this support into the program):





