Trying to switch to 32-bit Wineprefix from 64-bit Wine 1.6.2 (Trusty 14.04)

Question

I'm having a little trouble with Wine 1.6.1. I recently downloaded some 32-bit games that I'd wanted to try (BeamNG Drive and Bugbear's Next Car Game demo) and I had run into some trouble trying to get either of these games to run. So I came across a couple pieces of advice on the 'Net, one here on the Ubuntu community site and the other at BeamNG's forums, on how to create a 32-bit wineprefix on a 64-bit setup.

I managed to be able to create the wine32 folder, but now I'm having trouble making it my default Wine setup. Anybody have any idea how I can do that?

I'll post the URLs for said advice, btw:

• http://www.beamng.com/threads/1788-Installing-DRIVE-under-Linux-via-Wine
• How do I create a 32-bit WINE prefix?

Here's what I've tried so far in the Terminal:

steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/user/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot'
wine: chdir to /home/user/wine32
 : No such file or directory
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/steven/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot'
wine: created the configuration directory '/home/steven/wine32'
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 0x10ee890, overlapped 0x10ee89c): stub
wine: configuration in '/home/steven/wine32' has been updated.
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine32 wine dxsetup.exe
wine: created the configuration directory '/home/steven/.wine32'
fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented.
err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot
err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot
err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot
err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot
fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented.
fixme:iphlpapi:NotifyAddrChange (Handle 0x103e2b8, overlapped 0x103e2d0): stub
fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented.
fixme:iphlpapi:NotifyAddrChange (Handle 0x10fe890, overlapped 0x10fe89c): stub
wine: configuration in '/home/steven/.wine32' has been updated.
wine: cannot find L"C:\\windows\\system32\\dxsetup.exe"
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEARCH=win64 winecfgsteven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/steven/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot'
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEARCH=win32 winecfg
wine: WINEARCH set to win32 but '/home/steven/.wine' is a 64-bit installation.
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/steven/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot'
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/user/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot'
wine: chdir to /home/user/wine32
 : No such file or directory
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/steven/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot'
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX=/home/steven/wine32 WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot'
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX=/home/steven/wine32 WINEARCH=win32 wine wineboot
steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ 

I'm far from an expert and perhaps I've been going about it all the wrong way. In the meantime, I'll try to keep looking for solutions on my own.

Answer 1

Create a 32-bit Windows wine prefix:

env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine32 WINEARCH=win32 winecfg

(or win64 as winearch)

Usage of prefix - with env:

env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine32 command arguments[...]

command is like wine setup.exe.

For more info, see man env.

$HOME/.wine32 is your prefix name (actually, /home/username/.wine32) and you have to specify it always to use it.

Default WINEPREFIX is ~/.wine, you can re-create it by removing (with any changes): unrecommended

rm -R ~/.wine

You cannot change architecture of a prefix without re-creation in future. For different games I recommend a separate wine prefix (or for different game clients like EA Origin)

Answer 2

Just like you can't easily convert from a 32bit system to a 64bit system in place without a clean installation, you can't convert a 64-bit Wine prefix to a 32-bit one. The only way to achieve this is to either blow away your wine prefix and replace it with a 32bit one, or create a separate 32-bit prefix. Wine recommends the second of these options.

Wine even suggests that you keep separate prefixes if you need 32bit or 64bit. The best guide for this is here on Wine's wiki. Effectively, run this command: WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=/home/$USER/.wine32 winecfg to create the .wine32 folder/prefix.

From there, you can run the following: WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=/home/$USER/.wine32 wine /path/to/exe. This will then run whatever .exe the path points to. You should use this entire command to effectively force run in the 32bit environment any 32bit programs that you need to run in that 32-bit prefix.

(NOTE: This information was partly obtained from the in-depth guide I wrote for the Secure Download Manager for Microsoft Dreamspark and such. That is part of the notes here. Note that these steps here are extremely useful and are almost guaranteed to work as they are intended to.)