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Process architecture labels

The Processes and Applications pages share architecture detection and label formatting. The original image name/window title remains the sort key. The architecture of taskmgr.exe itself does not determine the architecture of the processes it observes.

Host / main program English suffix Simplified Chinese suffix
ARM64 / x86 (x86 emulated) （x86 仿真）
ARM64 / x86-64 (x86-64 emulated) （x86-64 仿真）
ARM64 / ARM64EC (ARM64EC) （ARM64EC）
ARM64 / native ARM64 None None
64-bit host / supported 32-bit compatibility mode Existing (32-bit) Existing (32位)
Native 32-bit Windows / x86 None None
Query unavailable, access denied, unsupported or invalid image metadata None; row error None; row error

No suffix is not proof of native execution. In particular, Windows 10 ARM64 can return insufficient information to distinguish a native 64-bit process from an emulated one. The label describes the main executable, not the instruction mix in every loaded DLL or JIT. An ARM64EC main executable can contain or load both ARM64EC and x86-64 code.

Sources and failure handling

  • IsWow64Process2 provides the native host machine and the WOW process machine. UNKNOWN means non-WOW64; it must not be interpreted as ARM64 native.
  • GetProcessInformation / ProcessMachineTypeInfo provides the process machine on Windows 11. If the information class is unsupported, only facts established by the older API are retained. Other API failures remain errors.
  • For AMD64 processes on ARM64, read the main executable's PE load configuration and CHPE metadata pointer to distinguish ARM64EC. The final EXE uses an AMD64 machine field; 0xA641 identifies an intermediate MSVC object, not a final executable. PE offsets, sizes, RVAs and file boundaries are validated before use. Managed AnyCPU images retain their queried runtime architecture.
  • A 32-bit observer temporarily disables WOW64 file-system redirection only while opening the queried main image, then immediately restores it. Otherwise System32 could resolve to a different SysWOW64 executable. Images are read as files, never loaded as executable modules.
  • All queries run on existing background workers. Successful results are cached by ProcIdentity (PID and creation time), and removed when that identity exits. Failures do not become successful/native cache entries or discard other rows.

Reproduce the ARM64 acceptance test

Compile tests/fixtures/architecture_window.cpp in MSVC developer environments for ARM64, x86 and x86-64, producing fixture-arm64.exe, fixture-x86.exe and fixture-x64.exe in a single fixture directory. Use /W4 /WX /O2 /MT /utf-8 /DUNICODE /D_UNICODE and link with user32.lib, kernel32.lib, /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS and the matching /MACHINE option. For fixture-arm64ec.exe, use the ARM64 developer environment, compile with /arm64EC /c, then link separately with /MACHINE:ARM64EC; the library search path must include the MSVC ARM64EC support directory and ARM64 CRT/SDK libraries. These are normal compiled window programs, with no production test hooks. Set TASKMGR_ARCH_FIXTURES to their directory.

Run this test for each observer target: aarch64-pc-windows-msvc, x86_64-pc-windows-msvc, and i686-pc-windows-msvc:

cargo test --locked --bin taskmgr --target aarch64-pc-windows-msvc `
  live_architecture_fixtures_use_the_real_process_sampler -- --ignored --test-threads=1

The test owns and cleans up its child processes, waits for their actual GUI readiness, checks both direct identity-verified queries and two real sampler passes, rejects a mismatched creation time, then verifies the exited fixtures no longer appear. Ordinary unit tests also cover machine classification, unknown API results, malformed/truncated PE data, AnyCPU metadata, suffix formatting, and incremental display invalidation.

For UI acceptance, start these fixtures in the interactive desktop and run each release observer separately. Confirm both pages show the same four classifications, then exercise sorting, refreshing, page switching, minimize/restore and clean exit. Record the exact Windows build, observer targets, source/binary hashes and screenshots in the compatibility evidence. Do not equate this targeted check with the complete hardware compatibility checklist.