What's the Difference Between the "System32" and "SysWOW64" Folders in Windows?

Did You Know? The first antivirus software was, ironically, a virus itself. In 1971, when the first computer virus, “Creeper”, was infecting mainframe computers, programmer Ray Tomlinson wrote a virus of his own called “The Reaper” that removed the Creeper virus. Geek Trivia Before “Ghosting” Was Slang For Ignoring A Dating Partner, It Was Slang For? Solo Ballroom Dancing → Long Term Identity Theft → Paragliding → Silent Film Acting → Advertisement Free eBook: Hybrid IT for Dummies Hybrid IT consists of both cloud and on-premises data center infrastructure.This book helps you understand both sides of the hybrid IT equation and how HPE can help your organization transform its IT operations and save time and money in the process. Delve into the worlds of security, economics, and operations to show you new ways to support your business workloads! Want to Change Your Email Preferences? At some point in the past you subscribed to the How-To Geek newsletter, but if you'd like to change the frequency or unsubscribe, you can do so by clicking the button. Change my Subscription (or unsubscribe) Today's How-To Geek Articles Is Now a Good Time to Buy an AMD CPU or Motherboard? How to Move to a Dedicated Camera After Using a Smartphone Camera What’s the Difference Between the “System32” and “SysWOW64” Folders in Windows? How to Set Up Whole-House Parental Controls with OpenDNS How to Disable Chrome’s New Ad Blocker (On Certain Sites or All Sites) How to Build a $35 Media Center with Kodi and the Raspberry Pi How to Match Colors on Your Multiple Monitors How to Prevent Your HomePod from Creating White Rings on Your Wooden Furniture How to Stop Facebook from Uploading Low-Quality Photos and Videos from Your Phone Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking Today's Review Geek Articles You Can Already Buy HomePod Coasters (Or Just Use Your Own) 8 Unique Sticker Packs to Customize Your iMessage Experience Aukey 10W Wireless Fast Charger Review: A Speedy and Stylish Qi Charger Google Will Block Annoying Ads In Chrome Starting Today Logitech Pop Review: A Smart Switch for Your Smart Home Gadgets Geek Comic Today's Tech Term IPR IPR (short for Inbox Placement Rate) is an email marketing deliverability benchmark used to determine the percentage of sent emails that actually reached the intended recipients’ inboxes. What We're Reading This section contains what we're reading from around the web, along with commentary from our editors. Think of it like your daily digest of the most interesting things online. Google removes 'view image' button from search results to make pics harder to steal Remember when Google's changes to search made the product better for users? [The Verge] The entirely unnecessary demise of Barnes & Noble Don't blame this one on Amazon: Barnes & Noble laid off seasonal workers going into Christmas, which hurt sales because of long lines and unpacked inventory. Now they're laying off more workers to make up for that lost revenue. [Tumblr] Atari stock jumps 52% on plans for nostalgia-backed cryptocurrencies We live in the dumbest timeline you guys. [ArsTechnica] Lab-Grown Meat Is Coming, Whether You Like It or Not The meat industry is full of waste, but will lab-grown meat ever be more efficient? [Wired] Is Now a Good Time to Buy an AMD CPU or Motherboard? Despite the wise acquisition of ATI’s Radeon graphics card division and some interesting diversification on the APU market, AMD has been playing second fiddle to market leader Intel for over a decade. But things have been looking up for the underdog as of late: the company’s Ryzen series of CPUs is a bona fide hit with both critics and consumers. Is now the time to invest in an upgrade for your CPU, and possibly a compatible motherboard to go with it? Read This Article → How to Move to a Dedicated Camera After Using a Smartphone Camera Last year, for the first time in five years, the number of cameras sold actually increased. While I've got nothing other than personal anecdote to back it up, I suspect that people are loving taking photos on their smartphones so much that some of them are actually deciding to buy a dedicated camera. Read This Article → What’s the Difference Between the “System32” and “SysWOW64” Folders in Windows? On 64-bit versions of Windows, you have two separate Program Files folders. But it doesn’t end there. You also have two separate system directories where DLL libraries and executables are stored: System32 and SysWOW64. Despite the names, System32 is full of 64-bit files and SysWOW64 is full of 32-bit files. So what gives? Read This Article → How to Set Up Whole-House Parental Controls with OpenDNS Your kids need internet access to do their homework, but that doesn’t mean you’re comfortable with them accessing everything online. There’s no technological substitute for proper adult supervision, but a free service called OpenDNS Family Shield makes it easy for parents to all block adult content with one simple tweak. Read This Article → How to Disable Chrome’s New Ad Blocker (On Certain Sites or All Sites) Google Chrome now has a built-in ad blocker, designed to get rid of the ads that are intrusive or otherwise annoying, but allow ads from sites that follow specific guidelines. If you’re not into the idea of letting your browser control the ads you see, however, you can disable it pretty easily. Read This Article → How to Build a $35 Media Center with Kodi and the Raspberry Pi If you've been holding off on setting up a Kodi-based media center computer because they're loud, expensive, don't fit in your media rack, the Raspberry Pi is your savior. For only $35 (plus a few accessories you may have lying around), you can get a small, efficient computer that can play all your media from one beautiful, couch-friendly interface. Read This Article → How to Match Colors on Your Multiple Monitors If you’re anything like me, you love working on a big, beefy desktop PC with as many monitors as will fit on your big, beefy desk. And if you’re anything like me, it also drives you crazy when the colors and image settings on those monitors don’t match exactly. Read This Article → How to Prevent Your HomePod from Creating White Rings on Your Wooden Furniture Apple’s HomePod is an amazing speaker, but it comes at a price. Not just a dollar amount, but also the toll it could take on your finished wooden furniture. If you’ve discovered white rings appearing on your furniture (or have heard about this phenomenon and want to prevent it), here’s what you can do. Read This Article → How to Stop Facebook from Uploading Low-Quality Photos and Videos from Your Phone Over the past few years, the quality of mobile cameras has become insane. Unfortunately, Facebook hasn't quite caught up to this. By default, when you upload a photo to Facebook from your phone, it's uploaded as a low resolution file. Here's how to change that. Read This Article → Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking I'm getting sick of Windows 10's auto-installing apps. Apps like Facebook are now showing up out of nowhere, and even displaying notifications begging for me to use them. I didn't install the Facebook app, I didn't give it permission to show notifications, and I've never even used it. So why is it bugging me? Read This Article → Advertisement Free eBook: Hybrid IT for Dummies Hybrid IT consists of both cloud and on-premises data center infrastructure.This book helps you understand both sides of the hybrid IT equation and how HPE can help your organization transform its IT operations and save time and money in the process. Delve into the worlds of security, economics, and operations to show you new ways to support your business workloads!