Why we need 64 bit installer to build 64 bit setup?

Question

I have a 32 bit application which works fine on both 32 bit and 64 bit environment. It is built on VS2010 in "Mixed Platform" mode. Now, I have been asked to built a setup specially for X64. I dont know why we need to re-built the setup even we already have one which is working fine on X64? Why it is so ?

Answer 1

You don't need a 64-bit installer, you just need to tell the installer that you are going to install a 64-bit program. It is rather a big deal, 32-bit programs are heavily affected by:

• Registry redirection, 32-bit programs are redirected to the SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node key
• File system redirection, most visible in that 32-bit programs are redirected to c:\\program files (x86)
• Affecting your choices, you may well need to pick another EXE or DLL if it depends on the bitness. That's primarily an issue with executables that contain unmanaged code, they need to be built differently if they are going to run on a 64-bit operating system.

The first two bullets are the ones that affect the installer the most, it needs to be aware of the bitness so it writes to the proper registry keys and directories.

Answer 2

If you have a 64 bit application running on a 64 bit operating system, you can have many advantages over the 32 bit application running on same operating system.

1 - A 64 bit application running on a 64 bit operating system can use much more memory/RAM as compared to a 32 bit application running on a 64 bit operating system

2 - In 64 bit application you can perform operations that will consume 64 registers at a time which can make your application fast as compared to 32 bit application which will consume on 32 registers

Answer 3

我不知道所有的背景知识，但是我想说的是，希望您使X64仅在程序上获得更高的速度，x32只能使用3GB ram，而x64可以使用更多。