Installing and understanding WINEARCH=win32 on 64bit system

**mark bower** · January 22nd, 2021

I tried 1fallen suggestion, but no luck. I will return tomorrow to reiterate what is not working for me, really nothing new.
[This WINE section does not seem to be very active, at least not a lot of support contributors, so I am thinking of making a fresh post at Games & Leisure.] I am really bothered by the fact that what worked on one computer does not work with the other, both the same OS.

**mastablasta** · January 22nd, 2021

use play on linux. you can install older version of wine and that should hopefully have libraries you need to run win98

**mark bower** · January 22nd, 2021

I tried PlayOnLinux in the past, may have even been your suggestion, but I could not get it to work. It did not seem intuitive, actually somewhat complicated - my problem in understanding it. I only need to run just one program in 32bit mode, so would like to stick with WINE.

I do see where the WINE version on the PC where I get to Win98 is a 5.x version, while on the PC that I am having trouble with is a 6.x version. BUT as far as I know, WINE is all about running older software so I would think the 6.x version should be even more robust and not cause problems? And i386 architecture is onboard. But if that is true that 6.x does no longer supports that architecture, then I suppose I would consider going back to the 5.x version given some help to modify the install method I used.

[edit]
o.k., today I gained some control over the process. With WINE ver 6.0 onboard, I can enter WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/win32 winecfg . This results in the WINEcfg pop-up and it offers all the selections including Win98! It seems that using WINEPREFIX requires that every use of it be immediately preceded by the command WINEARCH=win32.

So seeing the pattern, I now entered "WINEPREFIX=~/win32 wine ~/path . . ./ACAD2000/SETUP.EXE", and ACAD installed! Unfortunately, ACAD would not boot. I suspect that something is fouled and were it a fresh install, it would have worked. So maybe some more fiddling, but removing /win32, /.wine, and uninstalling wine-stable and wine-stable-amd64 with SynPkgMgr, then reinstalling, did not do the trick. But at least I got close to achieving the ACAD install and believe I have a handle on the WINEARCH and WINEPREFIX thing.

**mark bower** · January 23rd, 2021

I tried PlayOnLinux in the past, may have even been your suggestion, but I could not get it to work. It did not seem intuitive, actually somewhat complicated - my problem in understanding it. I only need to run just one program in 32bit mode, so would like to stick with WINE. As far as I know, WINE is all about running older software so I would think the 6.x version should be even more robust and not cause problems? And i386 architecture is onboard. But if that is true that 6.x does no longer supports that architecture, then I suppose I would consider going back to the 5.x version given some help to modify the install method I used.

[edit]

The problem is solved as I missed one key step of 3 steps, step #2 as seen below. Also I show an image of where Win98 is selected

Step1 WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/win32 winecfg [this results in the WINEPREFIX setup, and the WINE CONFIGURATION pop-up which shows all available Windows OSes.
Step2 select Win98 on the winecfg pop-up > Apply > O.K.
Step3 WINEPREFIX=~/win32 wine ~/path . . ./ACAD2000/SETUP.EXE

With the above 3 simple steps my ACAD2000 is up and running. And please note that I started this thread with WINE 3.6, Ubuntu 18.04 and finish with WINE 6.0, Ubuntu MATE 20.04.

**mastablasta** · January 23rd, 2021

right. and in PoL you would just click install "non-listed program", then select 32bit version on install and then you can configure it before (during) install or afterwards. click "configure wine" button and it will show up the winecfg screen.
http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/home/i...th-playonlinux

well if you have only one app, the CLI method is OK, but if you want to install multiple apps using different versions of wine - this is where GUI launcher make things easier and more manageable.

i mean at leats to me it is much easier to just click on prefix marked with the app icon, then click configure and i have various options available. it's easier to understand if you see "wine version" with drop down menu where you can just select the version that works best or install & select a different one etc.

**mark bower** · January 23rd, 2021

I probably should have come back for your help with PoL when I tried to get it to work for me, but I just got frustrated at the time I tried to do so. I do fully accept that the GUI would be more pleasing and easy to use.

In parallel, sort of, I have just installed a GUI boot manager called ReFind which graphically looks at my 3 HDs, two of them 64bit, one 32bit(Win7 HD). The GUI works very nicely and I have ACAD2000 installed on the Win7 HD. Had I had this going, I may have given up on the WINEPREFIX path. However, as it turns out, I like the display of ACAD2000 better under WINE than when run under Win7. And in the future, I might not have a PC that could accommodate the additional HD, thus again to have WINE (or PoL) working for me.