According to a Windows 2008 server blog:
WoW64 support for 32bit applications is now an optional feature in Server Core R2 and is not installed by default. This enables you to further reduce the footprint of Server Core if you remove it from the image. I’m interested in hearing feedback on our decision to not install this by default – is this a good idea, or will you always need to install this because you have 32bit code you need to run?
Hmm. This is a post referring to the Core version of Server 2008, but still it is an interesting development that you can totally turn off 32 bit support. The disturbing part from a compatibility standpoint is that it is not installed by default. Even our 64 bit compatible remote control has some elements that are 32 bit only. With no way to port these to 64 bit it immediately would render our products, and many others useless - at least until the customer added 32 bit support again.
I would hope that Microsoft would wait until R3, or Windows 8 to default to 64 bit only. Otherwise we will quickly need to update our Agent Settings application :/
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Thursday, November 13, 2008
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