Detect whether current Windows version is 32 bit or 64 bit

MrAnalogy_4906 0
Viewed 125887

Believe it or not, my installer is so old that it doesn't have an option to detect the 64-bit version of Windows.

Is there a Windows DLL call or (even better) an environment variable that would give that information for Windows XP and Windows Vista?

One possible solution

I see that Wikipedia states that the 64-bit version of Windows XP and Windows Vista have a unique environment variable: %ProgramW6432%, so I'm guessing that'd be empty on 32-bit Windows.

This variable points to Program Files directory, which stores all the installed program of Windows and others. The default on English-language systems is C:\Program Files. In 64-bit editions of Windows (XP, 2003, Vista), there are also %ProgramFiles(x86)% which defaults to C:\Program Files (x86) and %ProgramW6432% which defaults to C:\Program Files. The %ProgramFiles% itself depends on whether the process requesting the environment variable is itself 32-bit or 64-bit (this is caused by Windows-on-Windows 64-bit redirection).

64-bit batch-file windows
24 Answers

I tested the solution I suggested in my question:

Tested for Windows Environment Variable: ProgramW6432

If it's non empty then it's 64 bit Windows.W

MrAnalogy_49060

If you can make API calls, try using GetProcAddress / GetModuleHandle to check for the existence of IsWow64Process which is only present in Windows OS that have 64-bit versions.

You could also try the ProgramFiles(x86) environment variable used in Vista/2008 for backwards compatibility, but I'm not 100% sure about XP-64 or 2003-64.

Good luck!

Jason_725930

I used this within a login script to detect 64 bit Windows

if "%ProgramW6432%" == "%ProgramFiles%" goto is64flag
user_2867160

I don't know what language you're using, but .NET has the environment variable PROCESSOR_ARCHITEW6432 if the OS is 64-bit.

If all you want to know is whether your application is running 32-bit or 64-bit, you can check IntPtr.Size. It will be 4 if running in 32-bit mode and 8 if running in 64-bit mode.

Andrew_208010
user_5254530

I don't know on which Windows version it exists, but on Windows Vista and later this runs:

Function Is64Bit As Boolean
    Dim x64 As Boolean = System.Environment.Is64BitOperatingSystem
    If x64 Then
       Return true
    Else
       Return false
    End If
End Function
user_6001280

In C#:

public bool Is64bit() {
    return Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(IntPtr)) == 8;
}

In VB.NET:

Public Function Is64bit() As Boolean
   If Marshal.SizeOf(GetType(IntPtr)) = 8 Then Return True
   Return False
End Function
cycnus_38110

Answer for Newer Versions of Windows

Today, I posted some code on another question and an explanation of how to do this with IsWow64Process2 for Windows 10 version 1511 or later and Windows Server 2016. Additionally, the code determines if the process is 32 or 64 bit and whether the process is running under the WOW64 emulator.

One of the main reasons I have posted the answer is because while there were several suggestions to use IsWow64Process2, no code that I saw showed how.

Please see the answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/59377888/1691559

user_16915590

You can use the module from npm called @wider/utils_where-am-i. This runs in any javascript environment on a windows machine and elsewhere such as linux. On a windows machine it delivers an object which has { os: 'win32' } or { os : 'win64' }. It can run as legacy plain javascript say in wshell, in classic ASP or nodeJS

user_76209410
Related