I use Windows 7 64-bit. I was going through the System folders just out of curiosity and I noticed that my system has two folders that I think perform the same task. These are the syswow32 and syswow64. How are these different?
A 64-bit operating system contains both, a system32 and a system64 folder. First of all, the syswow32 or the syswow64 folders are usually used by the system to store dll files. DLL stands for Dynamic Link Libraries.
Dll files are essential for running programs on Windows. What actually happens is that the 64-bit operating supports both 64-bit, and 32-bit applications. Therefore you need both 64 and 32-bit dll files. The 32-bit dll files go to syswow32 folder and the 64-bit dll files go to the syswow64 folder. Therefore, you need both the folders in a 64-bit operating system. In a 32-bit operating system though, you will find only the syswow32 folder.
