I was fighting some problems with SlickRun for a while after installing 64 bit Vista on my machine recently. I noticed issues with powershell (SlickRun was always running the 32 bit version of it, even though the path explicitely specified the 64 bit version), and when I wanted to create a command to run SnippingTool, it turned out to be impossible… there are some very weird things going on in 64 bit Windows.

For example, Explorer shows me SnippingTool.exe in c:\windows\system32 (system32? Go figure), while my 32 bit Altap Salamander doesn’t show the same file in that location. In SlickRun it was equally impossible to configure my command to use that path, and when I tried to use the path to the start menu .lnk file instead, SlickRun’s path completion feature actually showed the .lnk file, but running it was still impossible. After a little search, I found this forum post here, which describes an option for 64 bit systems. Quoting (I don’t trust forum content to be there when I go back later):

Try this:

  • Close SlickRun
  • Open C:\users\<yourname>\appdata\roaming\slickrun
  • Edit SlickRun.ini
  • In the [General] section, add the line:

Wow64Hack=1

I activated this hack and things are better now — the PowerShell command runs the 64 bit version, and the SnippetTool can be run from it’s (alleged) c:\windows\system32 location. I still can’t use the .lnk file though, since I get a number (five or so) error message about Crypt32.dll when I try.