32 bit and 64 bit system files in Windows

The windows operating system stores both 32 bit and 64 bit system files under seperate folders. 

Because 64 bit OS needs to be able to run 32 bit programs without confusing them with new paths, some paths are redirected to different folders depending on whether a 32 bit or 64 bit application looks at them. The same applies to some registry keys. 

Basically, if you open explorer (which is a 64 bit program), you will see these folders:

C:\Windows\System32 << your 64 bit system folder
C:\Windows\SysWOW64 << your 32 bit system folder

(Yes, the numbers appear to be exactly the other way round, looks like someone at Microsoft was trying to be funny!)

However: When a 32 bit program, such as Atom, looks at your Windows folder, it will see these folders instead:

C:\Windows\System32 << your 32 bit system folder (!!!)
C:\Windows\Sysnative << your 64 bit system folder

This ensures that under the path C:\Windows\System32, all applications, be it 32 or 64 bit, will find the system files with the correct bitness which fits to the applications themselves. Therefore, 64 bit applications will find 64 bit files there, where as 32 bit applications will find 32-bit files there.

The way to access files with the "other" bitness (32 bit from 64 bit applications and 64 bit from 32 bit applications) is to access the C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and C:\Windows\Sysnative paths, respectively.


C:\Windows\Sysnative is not in the path by default. So you need to tell your 32 bit application to specifically look in that folder, by specifying the full path such as - C:\Windows\Sysnative\bash.exe.
 
By the way, you can easily check the different perspectives by trying to explore your Windows folder from 64 bit cmd.exe (which you normally get) and also 32 bit cmd.exe which you will find in Explorer in C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cmd.exe.