That folder (or rather whatever serves its purpose) has been around since the beginning, so all the 16-bit applications at the time would look for OS libraries in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\.
Then 32-bit comes along, and you can’t exactly drop 2 files with the same name in the same folder, so the 32-bit ones got put in their own named folder.
Then 64-bit comes along, and it turns out way too many applications hardcoded the System32 path to change it, so they kept the name the same and inserted a filesystem redirection for legacy 32-bit apps so when they try to read from System32 the kernel redirects that to SysWoW64.
That folder (or rather whatever serves its purpose) has been around since the beginning, so all the 16-bit applications at the time would look for OS libraries in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\.Then 32-bit comes along, and you can’t exactly drop 2 files with the same name in the same folder, so the 32-bit ones got put in their own named folder.
Then 64-bit comes along, and it turns out way too many applications hardcoded the
System32path to change it, so they kept the name the same and inserted a filesystem redirection for legacy 32-bit apps so when they try to read fromSystem32the kernel redirects that toSysWoW64.SystemWorldOfWarcraft64
Thank you