32-Bit or 64-Bit?

[KyleSmith2]

So I've never really payed that much attention to my OS, but i recently discovered that on my pc properties page it says that the computer is running a 64-bit operating system on an x64 based processor. but in windows explorer it shows the program files folder as x86. So i think my computer is confused.

 

[kanewolf]

No, that is pretty normal. A 64bit OS runs 32 bit programs fine. If you bring up task manager and see programs with "*32" then those are 32 bit applications. But a 64bit OS can access more than 4GB RAM total, even if the individual 32bit programs are EACH limited to 4GB RAM.