WinG is a pre-DirectX era graphics library from about 1994 so it's no more native/official system library on Win XP than it would be on your Win 10. Some application must have copied it to your XP's system32 folder, it is not distributed with XP either. But if you are afraid of a very unlikely negative impact I think you can simply copy it into the application's folder instead of System32/SysWOW64, it should work.

Falcosoft wrote:

WinG is a pre-DirectX era graphics library from about 1994 so it's no more native/official system library on Win XP than it would be on your Win 10. Some application must have copied it to your XP's system32 folder, it is not distributed with XP either. But if you are afraid of a very unlikely negative impact I think you can simply copy it into the application's folder instead of System32/SysWOW64, it should work.

Huh. I haven’t added any other applications to the XP machine so it must’ve been copied through this game. I thought it was already with XP and just not with Windows 10 based on others similar experiences I’ve found online. Well, I’m 99.9% positive it’s already in the application’s folder. However, being that I got the same error message before but not after copying it to system32 I’m assuming and hoping that will apply the same fix in Windows 10. Maybe because it’s a 16 bit setup it’s only copying to the system folder (in my XP machine) and not system32. I just can’t seem to find it at all in Windows 10. However, I just realized XP I’m running 32 and Windows 10 I’m running 64. So I’m betting it just didn’t try to copy the file from the application at all. Hopefully. So you don’t forsee copying the file to System32/SysWOW64/possibly system as well to cause any serious detrimental OS issues? Just wanted to check before messing with system files within my main OS. What is something it could possibly do negatively?

By 'application folder' I mean the folder where the main executable file is.
If your program copied the dlls on your XP to system folder instead of system32, it simply means it never expected to run on an NT based OS, but only on Win9x. It does not necessarily mean it has a 16 bit installer.
But even if the installer is 32-bit it does not know anything about elevation/administrator privileges.
It could copy its payload on XP since by default every process has admin privileges if it's run by an admin.
But on Win10 it's not the case. If you do not select explicitly to run the installer as admin it has limited rights to write.
On Win 10 64-bit you should copy the files to SysWOW64 since that's the 32-bit system folder.
By doing this you do not 'mess' with system files at all since you do not replace/overwrite existing files. It's harmless.

Falcosoft wrote:

By 'application folder' I mean the folder where the main executable file is. If your program copied the dlls on your XP to syste […]
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By 'application folder' I mean the folder where the main executable file is.
If your program copied the dlls on your XP to system folder instead of system32, it simply means it never expected to run on an NT based OS, but only on Win9x. It does not necessarily mean it has a 16 bit installer.
But even if the installer is 32-bit it does not know anything about elevation/administrator privileges.
It could copy its payload on XP since by default every process has admin privileges if it's run by an admin.
But on Win10 it's not the case. If you do not select explicitly to run the installer as admin it has limited rights to write.
On Win 10 64-bit you should copy the files to SysWOW64 since that's the 32-bit system folder.
By doing this you do not 'mess' with system files at all since you do not replace/overwrite existing files. It's harmless.

Yep it is in with the main .exe file. Ah, yes, that is definitely the case then as it was intended for 95/98. Unfortunately the installer is 16 bit I do know which is why it won’t allow me to run the setup .exe whatsoever on any system I’ve tried aside from 98. I am however luckily able to install with the application itself which is 32 bit. I had no idea the admin privileges became so much more picky as they’ve progressed. I’ve always know to try running as admin in Windows 10 though.

Ah, gotcha. Thank you very much. I’m hoping it will work since I’m getting the exact same message with XP before copying the DLL to system32. Windows 10 should handle a 32 bit application the same as XP I would think, right? So the system32 folder in Windows 10 is basically null and somehow reroutes to SysWOW64? Can any harm come from copying the DLL to system and system32 folders if for some reason copying to SysWOW64 doesn’t provide the fix like XP did?

IMeganElisabeth wrote:

Ah, gotcha. Thank you very much. I’m hoping it will work since I’m getting the exact same message with XP before copying the DLL to system32. Windows 10 should handle a 32 bit application the same as XP I would think, right? So the system32 folder in Windows 10 is basically null and somehow reroutes to SysWOW64? Can any harm come from copying the DLL to system and system32 folders if for some reason copying to SysWOW64 doesn’t provide the fix like XP did?

It's not Windows XP vs Windows 10 problem, it is 32-bit system vs 64-bit system problem. A 64-bit versions of XP and 32-bit versions of Win10 also exist.

On a 32-bit Windows within C:\Windows there is System32 folder, where most system libraries (DLLs) are located.
(Actually it doesn't have to be C: and it doesn't have to be \Windows, but that's irrelevant now)
So 32-bit programs use 32-bit libraries from System32.

On a 64-bit Windows there is System32 folder containing 64-bit libraries, and SysWOW64 folder containing 32-bit libraries.
Really.
So 64-bit programs use 64-bit libraries from System32.
32-bit programs need 32-bit libraries, and they try to load them from System32 as well. What the system does, it redirects all requests for files in System32 folder to files in SysWOW64.
So 32-bit programs think they get their 32-bit libraries from System32, but they are actually taken from SysWOW64.

You may think that if there was System32 for 32-bit libraries and System64 for 64-bit libraries the world would be better. Maybe, but this is not how Microsoft did this (and yes, they had reasons).

Long story short, on a 64-bit system you put 32-bit DLLs into SysWOW64 instead of System32.
This depends only on the "bitness" of your Windows, not on particular version (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 or 10).

WinG DLLs were sometimes distributed with an application, at which point it merely became a matter of copying the files wing.dll, wing32.dll, wingde.dll, wingdib.drv and wngpal.wnd to the system32 directory (for 32 bit Windows) or SysWOW64 directory (for 64 bit Windows) to regain system-wide support.

https://archive.org/details/WING10

Davros wrote:

WinG DLLs were sometimes distributed with an application, at which point it merely became a matter of copying the files wing.dll, wing32.dll, wingde.dll, wingdib.drv and wngpal.wnd to the system32 directory (for 32 bit Windows) or SysWOW64 directory (for 64 bit Windows) to regain system-wide support.

https://archive.org/details/WING10

This is what I was suspecting. Thank you SO much. Trying to decide whether to run the program you linked (looks great) or stick with copying my game’s wing32.dll to SysWOW64. Will the application you linked distribute those .dll’s to system, system32, and SysWOW64? Does it add or do anything else? Do you have a recommendation?

Azarien wrote:

It's not Windows XP vs Windows 10 problem, it is 32-bit system vs 64-bit system problem. A 64-bit versions of XP and 32-bit vers […]
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IMeganElisabeth wrote:

Ah, gotcha. Thank you very much. I’m hoping it will work since I’m getting the exact same message with XP before copying the DLL to system32. Windows 10 should handle a 32 bit application the same as XP I would think, right? So the system32 folder in Windows 10 is basically null and somehow reroutes to SysWOW64? Can any harm come from copying the DLL to system and system32 folders if for some reason copying to SysWOW64 doesn’t provide the fix like XP did?

It's not Windows XP vs Windows 10 problem, it is 32-bit system vs 64-bit system problem. A 64-bit versions of XP and 32-bit versions of Win10 also exist.

On a 32-bit Windows within C:\Windows there is System32 folder, where most system libraries (DLLs) are located.
(Actually it doesn't have to be C: and it doesn't have to be \Windows, but that's irrelevant now)
So 32-bit programs use 32-bit libraries from System32.

On a 64-bit Windows there is System32 folder containing 64-bit libraries, and SysWOW64 folder containing 32-bit libraries.

Thank you VERY much for that in depth explanation. (: I know this will come in handy for playing other older games in the future so I greatly appreciate it. Hopefully this 32 bit .exe will run with this quick fix just as it did with 32 bit XP.
Really.
So 64-bit programs use 64-bit libraries from System32.
32-bit programs need 32-bit libraries, and they try to load them from System32 as well. What the system does, it redirects all requests for files in System32 folder to files in SysWOW64.
So 32-bit programs think they get their 32-bit libraries from System32, but they are actually taken from SysWOW64.

You may think that if there was System32 for 32-bit libraries and System64 for 64-bit libraries the world would be better. Maybe, but this is not how Microsoft did this (and yes, they had reasons).

Long story short, on a 64-bit system you put 32-bit DLLs into SysWOW64 instead of System32.
This depends only on the "bitness" of your Windows, not on particular version (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 or 10).

Thank you VERY much for this in depth explanation as I know it will come in handy when playing more older games in the future. I’m hoping this quick fix of copying into SysWOW64 will work just as it did with copying it into system32 with 32 bit XP. I believe I’ve read somewhere it’s 16 bit that won’t work with Windows 10 but 32 bit should work just fine I’m thinking/hoping irregardless of whether Windows 10 is 32 or 64 bit version. Thanks again so much! Crossing my fingers.

Davros wrote:

WinG DLLs were sometimes distributed with an application, at which point it merely became a matter of copying the files wing.dll, wing32.dll, wingde.dll, wingdib.drv and wngpal.wnd to the system32 directory (for 32 bit Windows) or SysWOW64 directory (for 64 bit Windows) to regain system-wide support.

Besides wing32.dll all the other dlls/files are 16-bit so they are useless on 64-bit (and somewhat even on 32-bit) systems. They are for Win3.1 suport. So for 32-bit programs on 32/64 bit systems wing32.dll is enough since the functionality is supported by the Win32 API without special drivers. For 16-bit programs on 32-bit systems you also need wing.dll but that's all.