ManuSoft version 6.0 was our first version of ManuSoft for Windows and was written for Windows 95 specifically. We never did a version for Windows 3.11 or earlier. As such, ManuSoft 6.x has always been a 32-bit Windows program, written in pure Microsoft Visual C++.

Through Windows 95/98/2000/ME/XP/Vista, and now Windows 7, ManuSoft has remained a 32-bit program, and this is fine as it’s what the vast majority of users out there are using. But just recently we’re starting to see a few “64-bit Windows” users out there. These are people running “Windows XP 64-Bit Edition” or “Windows Vista 64-Bit Edition”, sometimes also referred to as “x64″ versions of Windows.

There is some software out there where special “x64″ versions are produced, specifically for running on these versions of Windows. Microsoft has versions of their Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server products that are designed for 64-bit computers, and Adobe has released 64-bit versions of some of their photo and video editing software. Programs that use a lot of RAM or do computationally intensive operations typically perform better as 64-bit software, but for the vast majority of programs there is little to no benefit in converting to 64-bit. You will not find a 64-bit edition of Microsoft Word, or even Microsoft Excel.

Similarly, we have no plans to produce a 64-bit edition of ManuSoft. There is simply no benefit for the user in us doing so. It would not make ManuSoft run any faster, or be any more efficient.

So what happens when you run 32-bit software on your 64-bit edition of Windows? The answer is that the 32-bit program is run in a special way, launched through a process called WOW64 or “Windows on Windows64″. WOW64 essentially provides an emulated 32-bit environment so that the older software thinks it is still running on a 32-bit machine. Any time the software tries to talk to the 64-bit operating system the WOW64 process steps in and provides a translation service so things continue to run smoothly.

(Incidentally, a very similar thing was done back when Windows 95 was first released. Windows 3.x was a 16-bit operating system, whereas Windows 95 was 32-bit. In order for all the older 16-bit software to continue functioning, Microsoft provided a service called WOW32, which performed in exactly the same way.)

All this happens silently and seamlessly. You’ll have absolutely no idea that the WOW64 process is being used while you are running ManuSoft.

There is one small discrepancy that you must be aware of though. Because ManuSoft is 32-bit, it will only talk to 32-bit ODBC drivers. This is fine as the 32-bit ODBC drivers continue to function on 64-bit Windows. But if you go into the “ODBC Administrator” on a 64-bit edition of Windows (found by going into ”Control Panel”, then “Administrative Tools”, then double-clicking “Data Sources (ODBC)”), then what you have in fact started is the “64-Bit ODBC Administrator”.  You’ll find the ManuSoftDAT and ManuSoftDBF User DSNs are listed, but if you try to configure them you’ll get error messages about “The setup routines… could not be found.”

Instead, you need to run the “32-Bit ODBC Administrator”, which you can do by clicking “Start”, then “Run”, then entering “%WinDir%\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe” as the program you wish to open. This will launch an almost identical looking program, but this time you will be able to successfully click on the “Configure” button and modify the ManuSoftDAT and ManuSoftDBF entries (should you need to.)