Page 1 of 1

Parallels VM - Windows In 64Bit Mode command not working

Posted: Mon May 08, 2023 8:51 am
by simpsonp
Hi,

Our installer needs to detect a 64bit OS and the IA "Get System Setting Windows In 64 bit Mode command" works fine in a 64bit Windows 10/11 OS running on bare metal, in VMware VMs and in VirtualBox VMs.

Unfortunately, it does not report the presence of a 64bit OS when running under a Parallels VM on MacOS, and reports that the OS is 32bit. I've confirmed that the OS is definitely 64bit.

We're using the November 2022 IA 15 release, but the issue has been reported in earlier IA versions as well,

Does anyone have a work-round for this?

Many thanks, Peter

Re: Parallels VM - Windows In 64Bit Mode command not working

Posted: Mon May 08, 2023 9:39 am
by BartWilson
Is your MacOS running on an ARM based processor? I found that that I first had to do a check to see if the system was 64 bit. On a Mac running Parallels on an ARM based processor this check would come back as false even though the ARM processor is 64 bit. In this false case, I then did a check for the "Windows on ARM with AMD64/EM64T Emulation" to do the next check. In the True case, my installers were then able to work on a Windows 11 OS running in Parallels on a Mac that was ARM based.

Re: Parallels VM - Windows In 64Bit Mode command not working

Posted: Mon May 08, 2023 2:27 pm
by simpsonp
Many thanks Bart, the issues did occur when running on Apple silicon. I've just included similar test logic to yours, which will hopefully fix the issue.

Technology has moved on a lot since I originally implemented the installer using IA 6!

Best wishes, Peter

Re: Parallels VM - Windows In 64Bit Mode command not working

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2024 11:13 am
by JohnGaver
BartWilson wrote:Is your MacOS running on an ARM based processor? I found that that I first had to do a check to see if the system was 64 bit. On a Mac running Parallels on an ARM based processor this check would come back as false even though the ARM processor is 64 bit. In this false case, I then did a check for the "Windows on ARM with AMD64/EM64T Emulation" to do the next check. In the True case, my installers were then able to work on a Windows 11 OS running in Parallels on a Mac that was ARM based.


That is indeed the intended behavior.

While Windows aarch64 is a 64-bit operating system, it may break assumptions that you have made about running on an AMD64 based 64-bit operating system.

This could be problematic especially for certain bitness-specific application runtimes.