How do I create a 32-bit WINE prefix?

Question

How do I create a 32-bit Wine prefix on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit?

Solution 1

To create a 32-bit WINE prefix on a 64-bit Ubuntu system, you need to open a terminal and run the following command:

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine wineboot

• Where WINEPREFIX is the directory for the prefix
• This directory must not already exist or you will get an error! Please do not manually create it in Nautilus or with mkdir./

Solution 2

This Is how I did it. The above answer - for me - did not work.

First I deleted the Wine folder with this command:

rm -r ~/.wine

If it tells you that directory is not empty just add the -f (force) flag. Note that this will remove any windows applications installed in this prefix!

Your command should look something like this:

rm -r -f ~/.wine

And then create a 32 bit prefix with this command:

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine wine wineboot

Solution 3

Just creating a wine32 prefix/directory (without wine64 prefix/directory) will not work. As was suggested above (but not fully written out) - and if you want to avoid the need to use winecfg (which is annyoing in automation - you need to somehow close it), here is the full solution: create a wine64, then a wine32 directory. If you use winetricks to check it (it gives a warning for wine64 directories), it will report both correctly (wine64 gives the warning, since it's 64, wine32 does not, since it's 32.). The solution;

rm -Rf ./wine   # carefull, this deletes your entire wine config (fine if you want to start afresh)

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine wineboot

...wait...

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 WINEARCH=win32 wineboot

After this, you can:

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 WINEARCH=win32 your_32bit_executable.exe

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine WINEARCH=win64 your_64bit_executable.exe

Solution 4

I was running into the same issue.

Type WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine winecfg

It should start to download the drivers necessary. I believe this issue is due to a problem occurring during the normal download. For me it my internet dropped as it was originally downloading the drivers.

Solution 5

Test if you already have multiarch enabled:

dpkg --print-foreign-architectures | grep -q i386 && sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Then install wine32:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wine32

And finally, don't delete your 64-bit wine install. just rename it to .wine64 then create a new .wine folder for your 32-bit apps:

mv ~/.wine ~/.wine64 && WINEARCH=win32 wineboot

View more solutions

Comments

[Aquarius Power]

thx! I have been fighting with this for a week :(, the message could be more specific..

[Shelvacu]

First, you shouldn't have to write sudo in the front. Also, this will delete the entire virtual windows drive.

[user877329]

You do never need to run wine as root!

[Alexander Kim]

That's not correct answer, because u're deleting 64bit version. You just have to create another PREFIX in order to have them both.

[Brendan Long]

Where you wrote "write sudo in front", the correct solution is to add -f, as in rm -rf ~/.wine. Adding sudo won't do anything. Also, WINEPREFIX=~/.wine is redundant, since that's the default location.

[Smile4ever]

You can use double quotes everywhere, no need for single quotes :)

[shea]

When I run this command, Wine asks for an absolute path (so /home/username/prefix32 rather than ~/prefix32

[Shelvacu]

@shea edited the OP accordingly

[Antonio]

It looks like on my Ubuntu Trusty 14.04 I did not need to delete the amd64 (win64) ./wine folder. I had 3 programs previously installed and they kept working. I did only create a specific win32 directory ./wine32 Next I installed .NET 4.0 with the command $ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winetricks dotnet40 and it worked flawlessly.

[Mateen Ulhaq]

Why not just create a .wine32 directory instead?

[Bonn]

fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented. err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented. fixme:iphlpapi:NotifyAddrChange (Handle 0x10ee8a0, overlapped 0x10ee8ac): stub wine: configuration in '/home/test/.wine' has been updated.

[numbermaniac]

@Levan how on earth did it not work for you? Your command deletes the entire existing wine directory, when all you needed to do was create a separate wine32 prefix - no need to delete an existing one.

[Gilberto Albino]

It was the only solutions that worked for me!

[haytham-med haytham]

Will this work: "sudo apt-get install wine32" ?

[Juan]

I tried to perform this, to get a 32 bit Wine prefix, with sudo -i and my password, but... The Ubuntu system tells me: "wine: '/home/jjpg' is not owned by you, refusing to create a configuration directory there" How could it be if I'm the only one SuperUser here?