Windows 7 wow64.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error. Prevents software from working.

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PlaytestUser

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After an update in the early morning of 5 Jan 2019, my computer restarted and had to recover from an unexpected shutdown.

After a Windows booted up to the desktop, I started receiving errors whenever I try to run non-browser software.

I receive the following pop-up when I try to run a program (Word, Photoshop, Internet Explorer, games, etc), where (…) is the name of the application that is trying to run:

[ (…) - Bad Image ]
(X) C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\wow64.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error. Try installing the program again using the original installation media or contact your system administrator or the software vendor for support.

I get the same errors when I try to run programs in Safe Mode.

My knee-jerk reaction was to restore to yesterday's restore point, but it didn't seem to make a difference.

When i tried to look up a solution for this, I found this link to look the most promising:

I tried the following solutions:

In a Command Prompt opened through Run as administrator, the following commands were entered


regsvr32 /s ntdll.dll
regsvr32 /s wow64.dll
regsvr32 /s wow64win.dll
regsvr32 /s wow64cpu.dll

SFC /SCANNOW

After the scan reached Verification 100% complete, it notified me that "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them." and indicated that the details would be in the CBS.log file.

These are all instances of "corrupt files" in the CBS.log file:

2019-01-05 13:03:22, Info CSI 000001d7 [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:46{23}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32"\[l:18{9}]"wow64.dll"; source file in store is also corrupted
2019-01-05 13:05:22, Info CSI 0000025e [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:48{24},l:46{23}]"\??\C:\Windows\SysWOW64"\[l:22{11}]"wdigest.dll"; source file in store is also corrupted

2019-01-05 13:07:04, Info CSI 0000032c [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:48{24},l:46{23}]"\??\C:\Windows\SysWOW64"\[l:20{10}]"rasman.dll"; source file in store is also corrupted

2019-01-05 13:07:55, Info CSI 00000375 [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:48{24},l:46{23}]"\??\C:\Windows\SysWOW64"\[l:20{10}]"rasman.dll"; source file in store is also corrupted
2019-01-05 13:07:55, Info CSI 0000037c [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:46{23}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32"\[l:18{9}]"wow64.dll"; source file in store is also corrupted
2019-01-05 13:07:55, Info CSI 00000383 [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:48{24},l:46{23}]"\??\C:\Windows\SysWOW64"\[l:22{11}]"wdigest.dll"; source file in store is also corrupted

I have since tried to restore to a point about a week ago, but it failed to resolve the issue.

Since I have read other users were able to fix similar issues by replacing the wow64, wdigest and rasman files with uncorrupted ones they copied from a friend's Windows 7 machine, I have been trying to figure out a way to get a copy of these files, but it's proven a challenge, since I don't know anyone in my area that is currently using Windows 7.

I am currently running Windows 7 Professional with Service Pack 1. I have the installation disc and I was wondering if I'd be able to pull copies of wow64.dll, wdigest.dll, and rasman.dll from there somehow. Is that possible? If not, are these files available for download from microsoft.com?

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