[Bug 58092] New: Wine on aarch64 fails to run Windows ARM applications: missing ntdll.dll in WOW64 mode

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58092

Bug ID: 58092
           Summary: Wine on aarch64 fails to run Windows ARM applications:
                    missing ntdll.dll in WOW64 mode
           Product: Wine
           Version: 9.0
          Hardware: aarch64
                OS: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: -unknown
          Assignee: [e-mail]
          Reporter: [e-mail]
      Distribution: ---

I'm experimenting with running Wine on an ARM64 (aarch64) Linux system and I’ve
run into issues trying to execute Windows applications compiled for Windows on
ARM.

I compiled Wine for aarch64 from source, and some built-in tools like Notepad
work fine. However, when trying to run Windows ARM apps like Google Chrome or
Firefox (ARM versions), I encounter errors and the applications fail to launch.

For example, running the Chrome ARM setup (ChromeStandaloneSetup.exe) results
in the following output:

wine ChromeStandaloneSetup.exe
0050:err:vulkan:vulkan_init_once Wine was built without Vulkan support.
00c4:err:ntoskrnl:ZwLoadDriver failed to create driver
L"\Registry\Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\winebth": c00000e5
003c:fixme:service:scmdatabase_autostart_services Auto-start service L"winebth"
failed to start: 1359
0024:err:environ:init_peb starting
L"Z:\root\Downloads\ChromeStandaloneSetup.exe" in experimental wow64 mode
wine: failed to load L"\??\C:\windows\syswow64\ntdll.dll" error c0000135

The key issue seems to be:
wine: failed to load L"\??\C:\windows\syswow64\ntdll.dll" error c0000135

From what I understand, this suggests a missing or misconfigured WOW64
environment. I would appreciate any guidance on whether this functionality is
expected to work yet, or if additional configuration or patches are required.

System details:
Architecture: aarch64
Wine version: wine-10.4-203-ge956c4ec71d
Distro: Rocky Linux 8.10 (Green Obsidian)

Any pointers on how to get Windows ARM applications working under Wine on
ARM64, or whether this is still in development, would be greatly appreciated.
If you need any more logs or build configuration info, I'm happy to provide
them.

[Bug 58092] Wine on aarch64 fails to run Windows ARM applications: missing ntdll.dll in WOW64 mode

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58092

BugSeeker  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Version|9.0                         |10.4

[Bug 58092] Wine on aarch64 fails to run Windows ARM applications: missing ntdll.dll in WOW64 mode

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58092

BugSeeker  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

[Bug 58092] Wine on aarch64 fails to run Windows ARM applications: missing ntdll.dll in WOW64 mode

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58092

--- Comment #1 from Alexandre Julliard  ---
It looks like this is not an ARM64 binary.

[Bug 58092] Wine on aarch64 fails to run Windows ARM applications: missing ntdll.dll in WOW64 mode

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58092

--- Comment #2 from BugSeeker  ---
Yes indeed, for some reason google chrome/firefox say these are arm64 apps, but
it turns out that's not quite true(at least the installer didn't launch).

I compiled a simple MFC sample app for ARM64 and it ran fine.

However, I saw that ARM64EC support was added, but when I try to open the same
MFC sample app I get this error:

0050:err:vulkan:vulkan_init_once Wine was built without Vulkan support.
00c8:err:ntoskrnl:ZwLoadDriver failed to create driver
L"\Registry\Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\winebth": c00000e5
003c:fixme:service:scmdatabase_autostart_services Auto-start service L"winebth"
failed to start: 1359
0024:err:environ:init_peb starting L"Z:\home\levon\Downloads\MFCApp1.exe"
in experimental ARM64EC mode
wine: failed to load /usr/local/lib/wine/aarch64-windows/ntdll.dll error
c00000bb

Could you provide an update on the current state of ARM64EC support in Wine? Is
there anything that needs to be enabled or configured differently to get such
binaries to run?

[Bug 58092] Wine on aarch64 fails to run Windows ARM applications: missing ntdll.dll in WOW64 mode

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58092

--- Comment #3 from Alexandre Julliard  ---
ARM64EC is supported, but it's not trivial to build.

Basically you need to build with the custom llvm from
https://github.com/bylaws/llvm-mingw, and build Wine with
--enable-archs=aarch64,arm64ec. Then you need to build the FEX emulator as
ARM64EC, and copy the resulting dll into the prefix as xtajit64.dll.

Hopefully the process will be made easier in the future...

[Bug 58092] Wine on aarch64 fails to run Windows ARM applications: missing ntdll.dll in WOW64 mode

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58092

Robert Lippmann  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |robert.lippmann.development
                   |                            |@gmail.com

--- Comment #4 from Robert Lippmann  ---
As an aside, I noticed that Windows on ARM queries the registry to find the
x86_64 translator.

Perhaps Wine could use that approach to use different backends for jit
translation?

[Bug 58092] Wine on aarch64 fails to run Windows ARM applications: missing ntdll.dll in WOW64 mode

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58092

--- Comment #5 from Alexandre Julliard  ---
(In reply to Robert Lippmann from comment #4)
> As an aside, I noticed that Windows on ARM queries the registry to find the
> x86_64 translator.
>
> Perhaps Wine could use that approach to use different backends for jit
> translation?

Yes, that's another way to do it. It's already supported in Wine, using the
same key as Windows (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Wow64).