Terminal doesn't launch under 64 bit

[dbaeumer]

• VSCode Version: 1.13
• OS Version: Windows 64 / Code 64

I have setup my terminal path like this: "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\WINDOWS\\Sysnative\\cmd.exe"

Trying to open the terminal results in the blank terminal with a cursor.

[dbaeumer]

"C:\\WINDOWS\\Sysnative\\bash.exe" doesn't work either.

[dbaeumer]

Commenting out the setting which defaults to PowerShell works.

[chriswiley]

Using VSCode Insiders 1.15 64-bit in Windows 10 and can't get bash to work either. Powershell works fine. But when I upgraded to 64-bit bash stopped working.

[dragonwolf83]

The 64-bit builds of VS Code need to update the default configuration paths that reference sysnative and change to system32. The sysnative path is a virtualized path that only exists within 32-bit apps as an escape to find the real 64-bit directory which has always been system32.

So in your example, you need to use "C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\cmd.exe" to get 64-bit cmd.

If you need to get the 32-bit versions, you would need to use SysWow64.

[Tyriar]

Testing this out, here's what I found:

terminal.integrated.shell.windows	Works?
C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe	✔️
C:\WINDOWS\Sysnative\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe	🚫
C:\WINDOWS\SysWow64\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe	✔️ (PSReadline not loaded)
C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe	✔️
C:\WINDOWS\Sysnative\cmd.exe	🚫
C:\WINDOWS\SysWow64\cmd.exe	✔️
C:\Program Files\Git\bin\bash.exe	✔️

This was caused by me not understanding properly how Sysnative works. Here's my new understanding:

• On 64-bit machine:
  • SysWow64 only exists on 64-bit machines
  • In 64-bit application:
    • SysWow64 contains 32-bit binaries
    • System32 contains 64-bit binaries (nothing confusing here)
    • Sysnative doesn't exist
  • In 32-bit application:
    • Applications that request System32 redirects to SysWow64
    • Sysnative only exists on 64-bit machines running 32-bit applications
    • Sysnative allows a 32-bit program to access the actual System32 containing the 64-bit binaries (instead of redirecting)

Given this, here's the logic we'll go with when selecting powershell.exe, cmd.exe and bash.exe paths:

Windows arch	Application arch	Path
64	64	System32
64	32	Sysnative*
32	64	N/A
32	32	System32

* perhaps we shouldn't bother with this and just use System32 (-> SysWow64) since the user explicitly requested the 32-bit version? It's probably best to assume they actually do want the 64-bit version as using the 32-bit one can lead to obscure messages that make VS Code look unreliable (like PSReadLine not working)

[Tyriar]

We also need some way of checking if Windows is 64-bit inside a 32-bit process. Right now this is being done by checking for the PROCESSOR_ARCHITEW6432 environment variable but I'm not sure this is correct as I don't see this environment variable on my machine, I do however see a PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE var ("AMD64"). This is the reason why the terminal works just fine using the default shell selections for me. I need to look into how to properly detect 32-bit app on a 64-bit machine.