Today I’ve encountered something new in my work on the Windows x64 platform.
First:
On a 64 bit Windows 10 platform you have:
- Program Files, for your x64 programs
- Program Files (x86), for your x86 programs
- System32, for your x64 system files
- SysWOW64, for your x86 system files
Now:
In working with Quest Kace, I’ve discovered a new “folder”. Well it not a folder as such.
I’ve created a script where I need to reset the Windows Update Agent and force it to register with WSUS.
As soon as the script executed from Kace, if failed at the ‘wuauclt.exe’ command: ‘File not found’. I then added the full path to the file ‘C:\Windows\System32\wuauclt.exe’ – Still: ‘File not found’. I used PSexec and looked inside the ‘C:\Windows\System32’ folder, and to my surprise there were no ‘wuauclt.exe’ file, but I could see it in a regular CMD running as admin or as a regular user.
Then an old colleague told me about the ‘SysNative’ folder, as if the whole world knew what that was!
On a 64 bit platform, there is a new “folder” called ‘SysNative’, that points around the ‘File System Redirector’ and will give you access to the correct system folder, in my case ‘System32’.
So, I changed my script to use the new “folder” ‘%WinDir%\SysNative\wuauclt.exe’, and it worked like a charm.
Well, you learn something new everyday!