Why does Program Files (x86) exist?

[hwood]

I installed the 64bit version of Vista Ultimate. I know that 64 bit
programs are installed into the
Program Files directory while 32 bit programs are installed into the Program
Files (x86) directory.

My question is; why is this done?

So far, I only have one real problem with it. That is; Vista's backup
utility insists on backing up the files located in Program Files (x86).
This actually seems like a bug to me. If the utility doesn't backup Program
Files, why would it backup Program Files (x86) files?

 

[Ben Dover]

It is most likely sloppy programming code from the development team. They
changed the locations of the 64 bit programs going into the correct
directory, but the person/team who worked on the backup portion probably
didn't think about it. That is my guess anyway.

 

[Feliks Dzerzhinsky]

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I installed the 64bit version of Vista Ultimate. I know that 64 bit
programs are installed into the
Program Files directory while 32 bit programs are installed into the
Program Files (x86) directory.

My question is; why is this done?

So far, I only have one real problem with it. That is; Vista's backup
utility insists on backing up the files located in Program Files (x86).
This actually seems like a bug to me. If the utility doesn't backup
Program Files, why would it backup Program Files (x86) files?

If you think about it, the reason is obvious. An example. The 64-bit
Internet Explorer is iexplore.exe. So is the 32-bit version. Putting
them in the same directory would be pretty ugly.

I'm not aware of the backup situation since I do not use the Vista
backup program. It doesn't give me enough control over which files are
backed up. I like to do things my way. ;-)

But I do have one question. Except for IE7, windows Mail and windows
Media Player, how many 64 bit applications do you have?



- --
Iron Feliks

Trolls are like babies. After feeding, they get stinky.
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