Windows – Extracting a .zip file into Program Files (x86)

The reason for this is simply many older installers either do not understand the new file structure and plonk everything in the standard program files directory or you are looking at a smart program that has a few 32-bit components which are being copied there.

Your best bet is to download a new program - such as x64 Winrar and just see where it installs to just to rule out a problem with your machine.

As for messing stuff up - it can, but it really depends on the program, there is no one answer fits all... some smaller, compact programs with just a few files should have no problem, where as, if you talk about Office, Adobe or any other "suite" or large program, it will most likely fail as they have many shared components that are cross architecture.

If you run the application, in Task Manager it should have a *32 beside it to indicate it's 32-bit. I'm pretty sure they had this implemented in Server 2003, not positive though, hopefully someone can clarify.

You could also run it through PEiD. PEiD does not support 64-bit PEs, so it will choke if it's 64-bit.

There is also the famous GNU file for Windows. It will tell you all sorts of information about an executable.

Example:

$ file winrar-x64-392b1.exe
winrar-x64-392b1.exe: PE32+ executable for MS Windows (GUI)

$ file display.exe
display.exe: PE32 executable for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit</pre>

As you can see, the 64-bit WinRAR installer is classified as PE32+, which signifies a 64-bit executable. The 32-bit application is simply PE32, a 32-bit executable.