FAQ - The Ocial Wine Wiki

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FAQ
This FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions, cov ers general topics about Wine. For questions related to Wine sof tware dev elopment, see the dev eloper FAQ. Quick links: running a program in Wine, running Wine f rom a terminal, uninstalling an application, getting a debugging log, running program as root. Contents 1. General questions 1. Who is responsible f or Wine? 2. Does Wine hurt Linux or other f ree operating sy stems? 3. Is Wine an emulator? There seems to be disagreement. 4. What is the dif f erence between Wine, CrossOv er, and Cedega? 5. Do I hav e to use the command line? 6. Will Wine work with my application? 7. What applications run well with Wine? 8. How do I run Wine? 9. How can I help contribute to the Wine project, and in what way s? 2. Installing Wine 1. Which v ersion of Wine should I use? 2. How do I install Wine? 3. Can I hav e more than one Wine v ersion on my sy stem? 4. Does Wine run on 64-bit? 5. Installing on Apple 1. How do I install Wine on my Mac? 2. Can I use Wine on an older Mac without an Intel chip? 6. How do I install Wine on my netbook (eeePC, Acer Aspire One, etc.)? 7. How do I compile Wine f rom source? 8. How do I apply a patch? 3. Installing applications 1. I hav e lots of applications already installed in Windows. How do I run them in Wine? 2. How do I run an installer using Wine? 3. How can I install applications to be shared by multiple users? 4. How can I prev ent Wine f rom changing the f ilety pe associations on my sy stem or adding unwanted menu

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entries/desktop links when I install a Windows program? 5. I hav e an MSI f ile, how do I install/run it? 6. Can I use Wine to install driv ers f or my hardware? 7. My installer tells me I don't hav e enough f ree disk space 4. Running applications 1. How do I run an application once I'v e installed it? 2. I want to pass command line arguments to my program 3. How should I start Windows programs f rom the command line? 4. When I double-click on a .exe f ile in my f ile manager, nothing happens. 5. Uninstalling 1. How do I uninstall Windows applications? 2. How do I uninstall *all* Windows applications? 3. How do I uninstall Wine? 6. Troubleshooting 1. How can I get a debugging log? 2. How do I disable the GUI crash dialog? 3. My program f roze up, how do I close it? 4. My whole computer f reezes, reboots, or shuts of f when I run my game in Wine! 5. My application say s some DLL or f ont is missing. What do I do? 6. My application won't run, and say s it needs .NET 7. My application won't run, and say s it needs Internet Explorer 8. My application runs, but text areas act strangely (e.g. lines don't wrap, double-clicking doesn't select words) 9. My application doesn't run right, and the log say s 1. Too many open f iles, ulimit -n probably needs to be increased 2. preloader: Warning: f ailed to reserv e range 00000000-60000000 3. winev dm: unable to exec '<APP NAME>': DOS memory range unav ailable 4. Failed to use ICMP (network ping), this requires special permissions 10. Graphics 1. My application complains about being unable to change the resolution or color depth. 2. The application I am try ing to run complains that it needs 256 colors but I hav e millions of colors. 3. My X screen won't go back to its normal resolution af ter running a game f ullscreen. 4. I'm using Desktop Ef f ects with Compiz, Fusion, or XGL and get poor perf ormance/odd messages/broken applications 5. Graphics in games with good ratings in AppDB are scrambled. 6. Wine display s corrupted or missing text. 7. Wine's windows and f onts are extremely large, and the winecf g window doesn't f it on the screen. 11. Sound 1. I'm using OSS in Wine and I hav e no sound. 2. Running winecf g seems to hang or complain

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about f iles when I click the audio tab 3. Audio in games sounds dif f erent f rom running in Windows 4. MP3s do not play in Windows Media Play er or applications that depend on it 12. My CD or DVD disc won't eject 13. My program f ails to do networking, but my other applications can get online 14. Why doesn't DNS resolv e in 64-bit operating sy stems? 15. I deleted my Wine menu, and now I can't get it back. 16. Some key combinations in my application do not work. 17. Where can I get f urther help? 18. I think I'v e f ound a bug. How do I report this bug to the Wine programming team? 7. Using Wine 1. How do I wipe the v irtual Windows installation? 2. Can I store the v irtual Windows installation somewhere other than ~/.wine? 3. How can I run two programs as if they were on dif f erent computers? 4. I want my Windows application to be able to launch a nativ e application to open documents 5. I want to associate a nativ e program with a f ile ty pe in Wine 6. What is this "winetricks" thing? Where do I get it? 7. How do I install Internet Explorer in Wine? 8. How do I get Wine to launch an application in a v irtual desktop? 9. How do I know what v ersion of Wine I hav e? 10. How does the Wine v ersion numbering sy stem work? 11. Should I run Wine as root? 12. I ran wine with sudo or as root. How do I f ix my permission errors? 13. Which sound driv er should I select in winecf g? 14. Why isn't PulseAudio av ailable? 15. How can I make Wine f onts anti-aliased? 16. How do I change the DPI (f ont size)? 17. How do I edit the Wine registry ? 18. How do I conf igure a proxy ? 19. How do I get a debug trace? 20. What applications/serv ices conf lict with Wine? 8. Applications 1. Does Wine support DirectX? Can I install Microsof t's DirectX under Wine? 2. How come Wine doesn't work well with copy protection? 3. I f ollowed a howto I f ound on a website, and the application still doesn't work. 4. I used a third party application (Play OnLinux, WineBottler, etc.) to install or manage applications in Wine and need help. 5. My application worked with an older v ersion of Wine, but now it's broken! 6. I really need this particular application to work. How can I go about making this happen? 7. I'm writing a Windows app. How can it detect if it's running under Wine? 9. Perf ormance

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1. 2. 3. 4.

What are the sy stem requirements f or Wine? My 3D application/game is v ery slow (f ps). Is Wine slower than just using Windows? I get lots of "f ixme:" messages in the terminal and Wine runs a bit slow.

10. Risks 1. Wine is malware-compatible 2. How good is Wine at sandboxing Windows apps? 3. Nautilus can delete y our home directory when y ou empty the trash!

1. General questions
1.1. Who is responsible for Wine?
Wine is av ailable thanks to the work of many people around the world. Some companies that are or hav e been inv olv ed with Wine dev elopment are CodeWeav ers, Bordeaux, TransGaming, Corel, Macadamian and Google. See Acknowledgements and WineHistory .

1.2. Does Wine hurt Linux or other free operating systems?

Wine increases the usef ulness of Linux, makes it easier f or users to switch to f ree operating sy stems, and makes it easier f or Windows dev elopers to make applications that work on them. See the Debunking Wine My ths article f or a f uller answer.

1.3. Is Wine an emulator? There seems to be disagreement.

There is a lot of conf usion about this, particularly caused by people getting Wine's name wrong and calling it WINdows Emulator. When users think of an emulator, they tend to think of things like game console emulators or v irtualization sof tware. Howev er, Wine is a compatibility lay er - it runs Windows applications in much the same way Windows does. There is no inherent loss of speed due to "emulation" when using Wine, nor is there a need to open Wine bef ore running y our application. That said, Wine can be thought of as a Windows emulator in much the same way that Windows Vista can be thought of as a Windows XP emulator; both allow y ou to run the same applications by translating sy stem calls in much the same way . Setting Wine to mimic Windows XP is not much dif f erent f rom setting Vista to launch an application in XP compatibility mode. There are a f ew things that make Wine more than just an emulator. Sections of Wine can be used on Windows. Some v irtual machines use Wine's OpenGL-based implementation of Direct3D on Windows rather than truly emulate 3D hardware. Winelib can be used f or porting Windows application source

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code to other operating sy stems that Wine supports to run on any processor - ev en processors that Windows itself does not support. "Wine is not just an emulator" is more accurate. Thinking of Wine as just an emulator is really f orgetting about the other things it is. Wine's "emulator" is really just a binary loader that allows Windows applications to interf ace with the Wine API replacement.

1.4. What is the difference between Wine, CrossOver, and Cedega?

Wine is the base of the project, where most of the work is being done. Wine is not perf ect, but tens of thousands of people nev ertheless use "v anilla" Wine successf ully to run a large number of Windows programs. CrossOv er (f ormerly CrossOv er Of f ice) is a product made by a company called CodeWeav ers that is based directly on Wine with a f ew tweaks and proprietary add-ons. Unlike the biweekly Wine releases, CrossOv er releases are rigorously tested f or compatibility with CodeWeav ers' supported applications in order to prev ent "regressions". CodeWeav ers employ s a large proportion of the Wine dev elopers and prov ides a great deal of leadership f or the project. All improv ements to Wine ev entually work their way into CrossOv er. Cedega (f ormerly WineX) is a product f rom a company called TransGaming. TransGaming based their product on Wine back in 2002 when Wine had a dif f erent license, closed their source code, and rebranded their v ersion as specialized f or gamers. In the y ears since Cedega was originally created f rom Wine, dev elopment on Wine and Cedega hav e continued mostly independently . TransGaming currently giv es back v ery little code to Wine. Cedega is not "Wine with more gaming support" - because Wine has had y ears of dev elopment since Cedega was made, and many games actually run better under Wine than under Cedega. Currently , Wine has more adv anced Direct3D support than Cedega, but Cedega still has more adv anced copy protection support due to TransGaming's licensing of (closed source) code f rom a handf ul of copy protection companies. Unlike CrossOv er, most improv ements to Wine don't get into Cedega due to the license dif f erences between Cedega and Wine. For more inf ormation, see Wine History .

1.5. Do I have to use the command line?

Y ou do not hav e to use the command line to use Wine. Y ou can use a graphical interf ace f or most things, much like on Windows. In many cases y ou can right-click an installer and select "Open with Wine", or just double-click it. Y ou can start installed programs using the shortcut icon or menu. Ev en if y ou hav e a recent v ersion, there are sev eral situations when y ou might want to use the command line. The most common reason is to get debug output when y our program does not run properly . Y ou might also want to use utilities such as regedit that do not hav e

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menu shortcuts. This does not hold true f or Mac OS X Wine usage, which is all command line currently , unless y ou use a Third party app.

1.6. Will Wine work with my application?

Probably ! If y our application is ev en slightly well-known, y ou will probably f ind other user reports in the Application Database. If there aren't any reports using a recent v ersion of Wine, howev er, y our best bet is to simply try and see.

1.7. What applications run well with Wine?

Thousands of applications work well. As a general rule, simpler or older applications tend to work well, and the latest v ersions of complex applications or games tend to not work well y et. See the Wine Application Database f or details on indiv idual applications. If it rates y our application Silv er, Gold or Platinum, y ou're probably okay . (If it rates it Bronze or Garbage, Wine isn't really ready to run the application f or most users.)

1.8. How do I run Wine?

Wine is not an application y ou run. Wine enables y our computer to run Windows applications. Simply install and run y our applications as y ou would in Windows. See How do I run an installer using Wine.

1.9. How can I help contribute to the Wine project, and in what ways?
Y ou can contribute programming or documentation skills, or monetary or equipment donations, to aid the Wine dev elopers in reaching their goals. One area where ev ery Wine user can contribute to this project is by sending high quality bug reports to our Bugzilla and helping the dev elopers with any f ollowup questions that they may hav e about y our bug. It is impossible and impractical f or a dev eloper to hav e a copy of ev ery program on the market, so we need y our help ev en af ter y our initial bug report. If a dev eloper has a good idea what might be causing the bug, he or she may ask if y ou can try a patch and see if it f ixes the problem. If the patch works and then makes its way into our main dev elopment tree, the bug report will be closed, y our help will be appreciated by ev ery one and y our problem will be f ixed. For a list of ideas of how y ou can help, please consult the helping Wine page.

2. Installing Wine
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2.1. Which version of Wine should I use?

Short answer: Use the v ersion that works best with the particular applications y ou want to run. In most cases, this will be the latest dev elopment v ersion; howev er, in some cases it may take some experimenting to f ind it. Longer answer: Wine dev elopment is rapid, with new releases in the dev elopment branch ev ery two weeks or so. Functionality will usually be best with the most recent dev elopment v ersion, howev er, there are cases where changes to Wine cause applications that worked well in older v ersions to not work in the new one; these are called regressions. A good rule of thumb is to start with the v ersion of Wine installed with y our distro and see if that works with the applications y ou want to use. If it does, good! If it doesn't, upgrade. In most cases the upgrade should be to the latest dev elopment v ersion, but it is a good idea to check Bugzilla and the AppDB f or any known regressions. If there are any , upgrade to the most recent v ersion known to work f or y our application. Note that while Wine does hav e a "stable" branch, the term "stable" ref ers to the branch as a whole, which is inf requently updated, and only with bugf ixes promised not to cause regressions. The initial stable release, 1.0.x, had only one update in two y ears. Users of a dev elopment release can achiev e the same degree of stability by simply not upgrading.The current stable release is 1.2; v ersions older than that are no longer supported. Ubuntu users: prior to the of f icial release of Wine 1.2 on July 16, 2010, the "wine1.2" package in Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 (and up) was actually the 1.1.x dev elopment v ersion. The Ubuntu "wine1.2" package is now the stable 1.2 release. This unf ortunate choice in naming has led to a great deal of conf usion. Bef ore seeking help on the f orum/mailing list or IRC, please v erif y the v ersion of Wine y ou hav e installed by ty ping wine --v ersion in a terminal, and if it is not 1.2 or later, upgrade.

2.2. How do I install Wine?

The best option is to use precompiled binary package(s) f or y our particular distribution. See the Wine download page f or links and additional inf ormation. If y ou can't f ind packages with a recent Wine v ersion f or y our distro, y ou can compile Wine f rom source.

2.3. Can I have more than one Wine version on my system?

Y es, but y ou will hav e to build Wine y ourself (see How to compile Wine f rom source), as it is not possible to hav e multiple distro packages installed. The easiest way to do this is to run Wine f rom the build directory (don't do "make install"). If y ou want to actually install multiple v ersions, use --pref ix when building Wine to designate a dif f erent install directory f or each v ersion, e.g.,

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./configure prefix=/path/to/install /directory && make

then install it with

sudo make install

Note that regardless of whether y ou install multiple v ersions or run them f rom the build directory , y ou will still hav e to designate which v ersion of Wine y ou wish to use when running applications. It is also recommended that applications being run with dif f erent Wine v ersions be installed into separate winepref ixes.

2.4. Does Wine run on 64-bit?

Y es. Normally , installation should be the same as with 32-bit: simply install the Wine package f or y our distribution. Check the Downloads page. If y ou need to build Wine f rom source, see WineOn64bit. Note that Wine f or 64-bit actually runs in 32-bit mode. This is necessary , as v irtually all Windows applications are 32-bit. Support f or 64-bit Windows applications is currently experimental (see Wine64). Wine is currently of f ered in 32-bit. 16-bit and 32-bit Windows applications work with it. It runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux/Unix installations. Wine is also experimentally of f ered in 64-bit. 32-bit and 64-bit Windows applications (should) work with it. It runs only on 64-bit Linux installations.

2.5. Installing on Apple

2.5.1. How do I install Wine on my M ac?
If y ou are running Mac OS X, please see the Mac OS X FAQ. If this is too complicated, there are sev eral 3rd party apps y ou can use like Codeweav ers' Crossov er f or Mac. We are looking f or someone to help us build Mac packages so that Wine will be as easy to install on Mac as it is on Linux. If y ou can help, please contact the dev elopers' mailing list. If y ou are running Linux on y our Mac, installing Wine is as simple as installing it under Linux on a PC. Simply v isit the downloads page.

2.5.2. Can I use Wine on an olde r M ac without an Inte l chip?

No, not ev en in Linux. Older Macs used PowerPC processors, which are incompatible with code compiled f or x86 (Intel and AMD) processors unless the code is run under CPU emulation. Wine Is Not a (CPU) Emulator, nor does it include one. The Darwine project,

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howev er, is an ef f ort to do just that.

2.6. How do I install Wine on my netbook (eeePC, Acer Aspire One, etc.)?
If y ou hav e replaced the customized distro that came preinstalled on y our netbook (Xandros, Linpus, etc.) with one of the mainstream distros that prov ide up-to-date Wine packages, y ou should be able to install Wine as normal f or that distro. If y ou are still using Xandros (eeePC), Linpus (Acer Aspire One) or any other customized distro that came preinstalled on y our netbook, y ou will hav e to ask on y our netbook's support f orum. Only other users of those distros can adv ise y ou on what, if any , binary packages will work on y our sy stem, where to f ind them, and how to install them. Y ou can also try building Wine f rom source f ollowing the instructions in the Wine User Guide, but y ou will still need to consult y our netbook's support f orum regarding satisf y ing dependencies on y our particular sy stem.

2.7. How do I compile Wine from source?

Make sure y ou hav e the recommended packages installed. Get Wine using Git, or download the latest tarball and unpack it. If y ou want to apply a patch, do it with a command like patch -p1 < foo.patch in the Wine source directory . Y ou may hav e to experiment bef ore y ou get this right. See the manual f or patch f or details. Run configure and make to compile Wine, and sudo make install to install it. (Note that "make install" is optional; Wine can be run f rom the build directory .) See any of the many tutorials about building packages f rom source, e.g. http://www.tuxf iles.org/linuxhelp/sof tinstall.html or https://help.ubuntu.com/community /CompilingSof tware f or more tips, or see the README f ile in the source tarball f or more detailed instructions.

2.8. How do I apply a patch?

Y ou hav e to build Wine f rom source; see abov e.

3. Installing applications
3.1. I have lots of applications already

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installed in Windows. How do I run them in Wine?

Short answer: Y ou hav e to install them in Wine just like you did in Windows. Applications usually hav e a setup or installer program. Long answer: Some applications can be copied f rom Windows to Wine and still work, but don't try this unless y ou like tinkering under the hood of y our car while it's running. Wine is not designed to interact with an existing Windows installation. If you have any data you need from a Windows installation, browse your Windows filesystems in your normal file manager and copy the data to another location. WARNING: Do not try to conf igure Wine to point to y our actual Windows C:\ driv e. This will break Windows and require a Windows reinstall. We hav e tried to make this hard to do, so y ou probably cannot do it by accident. If y ou do manage this, Wine may or may not continue to operate, but y our Windows install will be 100% dead due to critical parts of it being ov erwritten. The only way to f ix Windows af ter this has happened is to reinstall it.

3.2. How do I run an installer using Wine?

Double-click on the installer, just like in Windows! This may sometimes open the f ile in the wrong program - if this happens, check the f ilety pe associations f or the f ile. Y ou can also right-click on it, choose "Run with", and choose "Wine". Or, if all else f ails, open a terminal window, "change directory " to the f older containing the installer's .exe f ile, and run the installer with Wine by ty ping wine f ollowed by the installer's f ilename. For example:

cd ~/Desktop wine FluffyBunnySetup.exe

If the installer's name doesn't end in .exe, y ou hav e to say "wine start" and then the f ilename:

cd ~/Desktop wine start FluffyBunnySetup.msi

Instead of ty ping the entire path and f ilename, y ou can usually ty pe just the f irst f ew letters and then press Tab, and the computer will complete the f ilename y ou were ty ping f or y ou. If there are more then one f ile that start with the same letters, press TAB second time to see all f iles that match. If the program comes on multiple CD-ROM discs, y ou don't want to start Wine f rom the CD-ROM's directory or y ou won't be able to eject

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discs without exiting the installer. First, v erif y that y our CD-ROM driv e is assigned a driv e letter in the "Driv es" tab of winecfg (e.g. D: -> /media/cdrom ). Then run the installer this way :

wine start 'D:\setup.exe'

or

wine start /unix /media/cdrom/setup.exe

3.3. How can I install applications to be shared by multiple users?

Wine does not currently allow sharing its conf iguration ("pref ixes") between users, due to the risk of registry corruption f rom running multiple wineserv ers simultaneously (bug #11112). At present, applications must be installed separately f or each user. Howev er, y ou can copy Wine pref ixes; y ou can install ev ery thing to one pref ix, then make a copy of it in each user's home directory . This sav es running installers repeatedly .

3.4. How can I prevent Wine from changing the filetype associations on my system or adding unwanted menu entries/desktop links when I install a Windows program?
Users who do not want the installer f or a Windows app to change f ilety pe associations, add menu items, or create desktop links, can disable winemenubuilder.exe . There are sev eral way s to do this: 1. In winecfg: bef ore running the installer, run winecfg. Go to the Libraries tab and ty pe winemenubuilder.exe into the "New ov errides" box (it is not in the dropdown list). Click add, then select it f rom the "Existing ov errides" box. Click "Edit" and select "Disable" f rom the list, then click "Apply ." 2. Registry file: If y ou need to apply the setting many times (e.g., ev ery time y ou recreate the Wine pref ix), this approach may be more conv enient. Create a text f ile named with extension .reg (e.g., disable-winemenubuilder.reg) containing the f ollowing: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\DllOverrides] "winemenubuilder.exe"="" To apply the setting, run:

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regedit disable-winemenubuilder.reg 3. Environment variable: set the WINEDLLOVERRIDES env ironment v ariable when y ou run the installer, e.g., WINEDLLOVERRIDES=winemenubuilder.exe=d wine setup.exe Disabling winemenubuilder.exe will cause wine programs to print errors that they cannot f ind it (though the errors do not seem to interf ere with program operation). An alternativ e approach that av oids the errors is to replace it with the do-nothing program. Compile the f ollowing with MinGW's gcc under wine and place the executable at C:\Windows\System32\winemenubuilder.exe :

#include <stdio.h> int main() { /* Do nothing */ return 0; }

Then f ollow the same procedure as abov e, but set winemenubuilder.exe to "nativ e" instead of "disable" in winecfg, or use the f ollowing registry f ile or env ironment v ariable:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \Wine\DllOverrides] "winemenubuilder.exe"="native" WINEDLLOVERRIDES=winemenubuilder.exe=n wine setup.exe

3.5. I have an MSI file, how do I install/run it?

MSI f iles cannot be run directly , y ou need to use the msiexec program. MSI f iles can be installed in Wine f rom the terminal like this

wine msiexec /i whatever.msi

Alternativ ely :

wine start whatever.msi

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That will then run the MSI program the same as if y ou had doubleclicked it in Windows.

3.6. Can I use Wine to install drivers for my hardware?

No. With the possible f uture exception of some printer driv ers, Wine requires y our hardware to already be working on y our operating sy stem. The technical reason f or this is that Wine, like most applications, runs in user mode and not kernel mode.

3.7. My installer tells me I don't have enough free disk space

Usually , y ou really don't hav e enough f ree disk space. Wine's C: driv e is located in y our home directory . Whatev er partition contains /home must hav e enough f ree space f or y our program. Y ou can check by running:

df -h $HOME
If the amount of space y ou need is less than 1 GB, and df reports y ou hav e more than 1 GB av ailable, try setting the Windows v ersion to Windows 98. This will work around bugs in some old (Windows 98 era) installers that could not cope with large driv es. If y ou want to use a dif f erent partition that has more f ree space, use a winepref ix that is located on the other partition. Note that y our other partition must be a Unix f ilesy stem; FAT and NTFS partitions will not work. See How can I run two programs as if they were on dif f erent computers f or instructions.

4. Running applications
4.1. How do I run an application once I've installed it?
Af ter y ou install an application with Wine, it will probably hav e an entry in the y our computer's Applications->Wine->Programs menu, and/or an icon on the desktop, just as it would under Windows. Y ou should be able to use them just as y ou would on Windows. Alternately , browse to the .wine/drive_c/Program Files f older in y our home directory (it is hidden, so y ou might need to do View->Show Hidden Files in y our f ile manager), look f or the application's main .exe f ile (y ou may hav e to guess), and double-click it. Or, if all else f ails, open a terminal window, and nav igate down to the application's directory . For example:

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cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files ls Adobe Microsoft FluffyBunny cd FluffyBunny

Then look f or the application's main .exe f ile (y ou may hav e to guess), and run it using the wine command:

ls *.exe fluff.exe uninstall.exe wine fluff.exe

ereg.exe

4.2. I want to pass command line arguments to my program

If y ou're using a program with switches on Windows, f or instance:

quake.exe -map e1m1

Then y ou can do the equiv alent in Wine by running:

wine quake.exe -map e1m1

That is, the command line is identical, except with wine in f ront. Note, howev er, that y ou may need to escape certain special characters with backslashes due to the way they 're handled in the Linux shell. For instance:

quake.exe -map C:\Quake\e1m1.bsp

Becomes:

wine quake.exe -map C:\\Quake\\e1m1.bsp

For more inf ormation on using backslashes, see: http://www.tuxf iles.org/linuxhelp/weirdchars.html

4.3. How should I start Windows programs from the command line?
This will allow y ou to see messages f rom Wine that may help troubleshoot problems. Because Windows programs will of ten look f or f iles in the location

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they were started f rom, when using the command line y ou should start them in a v ery specif ic way : "change directory " to the f older where the program is located and run the .exe f ile using only its f ilename. For example:

cd '.wine/drive_c/Games/Tron' wine tron.exe

In some cases y ou may wish to specif y the f ull path to the program's .exe f ile. For example, if y ou need to install a program f rom multiple CDs, the prev ious method won't work (entering the directory in the terminal will prev ent y ou f rom remov ing the CD). Y ou can prov ide Wine with a DOS or Windows sty le path inside single quotes like so:

wine start 'C:\Games\Tron\tron.exe'

Y ou need to use wine start if y ou specif y a f ull path, because that allows Wine to set the working directory f or the program if it needs it. Y ou can also use double quotes, but y ou need two backslashes instead of one:

wine start "C:\\Games\\Tron\\tron.exe"

If y ou need to use a Unix sty le pathname, use the /Unix option to start, e.g.

wine start /Unix "$HOME/installers /TronSetup.exe"

For current Wine, once a program is installed, y ou can saf ely use any shortcuts that the installer has created.

4.4. When I double-click on a .exe file in my file manager, nothing happens.

Note: If y ou can, start applications by clicking on the application's icon in the Applications / Wine menu or desktop instead. Doubleclicking .exe f iles is ty pically only needed f or applications that aren't installed y et, e.g. to run the setup.exe on a CD-ROM game or a downloaded installer. If double-clicking doesn't work (e.g., recent Ubuntu), y ou might need to right-click the f ile and choose "Run with Wine". It depends on y our f ile manager. If that also doesn't work, contact whoev er built y our Wine packages and let them know there's a problem. Y ou can work around this by using the command line instead of y our f ile manager (see prev ious question). If y ou see a line like:

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err:module:import_dll Library MFC42.DLL (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Yoyodyne \\Overthruster.DLL") not found
it means y ou need to install a missing runtime library ; see e.g. "My application won't run, and say s it needs MFC42.DLL" below.

5. Uninstalling
5.1. How do I uninstall Windows applications?
Y ou can run Wine's uninstaller command; this is like Windows' "Add/Remov e Programs" f unction. It should remov e menu and desktop entries... but it's not well tested; it might not work with all apps. See below f or a reliable way to remov e *all* Windows apps.

5.2. How do I uninstall *all* Windows applications?

To remov e all programs installed under Wine, remov e the winepref ix (usually the ~/.wine directory ) by pasting the f ollowing command into a terminal:

rm -rf $HOME/.wine
But that doesn't remov e them f rom the sy stem menu; to clean out the menus, caref ully paste the f ollowing commands into a terminal:

rm -f $HOME/.config/menus/applicationsmerged/wine* rm -rf $HOME/.local/share/applications /wine rm -f $HOME/.local/share/desktopdirectories/wine* rm -f $HOME/.local/share/icons/????_*. {xpm,png} rm -f $HOME/.local/share/icons /*-x-wine-*.{xpm,png}

5.3. How do I uninstall Wine?

If y ou installed Wine with y our distribution's package manager, use

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the package manager again to uninstall Wine. (If y ou installed Wine f rom source, then use make uninstall in the source directory to remov e it.) This won't uninstall y our Windows apps, though; see abov e f or that.

6. Troubleshooting
6.1. How can I get a debugging log?
Run y our application f rom the command line (see How should I start Windows programs f rom the command line?) Y ou can then copy the log f rom the screen and paste it into a f ile if it's short; otherwise redirect the output of wine to a f ile using a Unix shell redirection, e.g.

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Games/Tron wine tron.exe &> log.txt

See also How do I get a debug trace? f or inf ormation on how to get more v erbose debug logs.

6.2. How do I disable the GUI crash dialog?

As of 1.1.20, Wine includes a GUI crash dialog that is turned on by def ault. Users of apps that work despite a background crash may f ind the GUI dialog annoy ing, and in some cases the dialog itself has been reported to prev ent an app f rom working. The easiest way to disable the crash dialog is with winetricks:

sh winetricks nocrashdialog
If y ou pref er to do it manually , copy the f ollowing key to a text editor:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \Wine\WineDbg] "ShowCrashDialog"=dword:00000000

Sav e the f ile with a .reg extension (e.g., crashdialog.reg), then apply it with regedit:

regedit crashdialog.reg
(Y ou may need to specif y the f ull path to the f ile, depending on where y ou sav ed it.)

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To turn the GUI crash dialog back on, change 00000000 to 00000001 and reapply . These changes can also be made by simply running regedit and adding/changing the appropriate key the point-and-click way .

6.3. My program froze up, how do I close it?

If y ou ran the program f rom a terminal window by ty ping wine (program).exe, y ou can usually just go back to that terminal window and press Ctrl+C. If y ou ran the application some other way , such as f rom a launcher shortcut, then y ou can open up a terminal and f orcibly kill the process:

killall -9 Application.exe
If y ou want to kill all Wine programs at once, y ou can run:

wineserver -k
Y ou can also open up a Wine v ersion of the Windows task manager by running wine taskmgr in a terminal. This will allow y ou to kill indiv idual Wine processes.

6.4. My whole computer freezes, reboots, or shuts off when I run my game in Wine!
If y ou are getting a complete deadlock and are unable to ev en use y our mouse af ter running Wine, it's probably not a specif ic problem with the Wine sof tware. Wine is a user-lev el process, and shouldn't be able to completely hang the operating sy stem under any circumstances. Instead, Wine is likely exposing a deeper problem with the sy stem, such as a def ectiv e hardware driv er, a bad memory stick, or ov erclocking f lakiness. It's of ten a graphics driv er problem, in which case non-Wine apps might also be af f ected. If running glxgears also crashes, it's def initely a graphics driv er problem. The most common cause is upgrading to a new kernel without also updating the graphics driv ers to match. Try reinstalling y our graphics driv ers. If the computer is a laptop and shutting itself of f entirely , a likely cause is ov erheating. Some laptops hav e problems with cooling to begin with, and the Linux ACPI code controlling f ans is known to be buggy . If that doesn't help, ask f or help on the wine-users f orum. Be sure to mention the name of the app, the v ersion of wine, the output of cat /etc/issue , lspci | grep -i vga , and, if y ou're using the proprietary NVidia driv ers, cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version . May be someone can help.

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6.5. My application says some DLL or font is missing. What do I do?

Applications should come with all the DLLs they need (except f or core Windows DLLs). They sometimes f orget to, and rely on y ou to already hav e the DLL or f ont installed. Y ou can install the missing DLL or f ont in sev eral way s: 1. downloading them f rom the original creators of the runtime (eg. Microsof t). The easiest way to do this is with winetricks (see below). 2. installing other applications which do include them 3. copy ing them f rom a licensed v ersion of Windows installed on the same machine Do not download DLLs or scripts f rom websites y ou do not know and trust! Fake or inf ected DLLs can cause y ou great pain, ev en on Wine. Missing DLLs that can be installed with winetricks include: MFC40.DLL and f riends: run winetricks and select mfc40 (Microsof t Foundation Classes f rom Visual C++ 4). MFC42.DLL, MSVCP60.DLL and f riends: run winetricks and select vcrun6 (MS Visual C++ 6 sp4 libraries: mf c42, msv cp60, msv crt). MFC71.DLL, MSVCP71.DLL and f riends: run winetricks and select vcrun2003 (MS Visual C++ 2003 libraries: mf c71,msv cp71,msv cr71). MFC80.DLL, MSVCP80.DLL and f riends: run winetricks and select vcrun2005 (MS Visual C++ 2005 libraries: mf c80,msv cp80,msv cr80). MFC90.DLL, MSVCP90.DLL and f riends: run winetricks and select vcrun2008 (MS Visual C++ 2008 libraries: mf c90,msv cp90,msv cr90). MDAC: run winetricks and select mdac27 (MS MDAC 2.7). See the winetricks wiki page f or a complete list of winetricks commands.

6.6. My application won't run, and says it needs .NET

Wine still has many problems with .NET. Y ou may be out of luck, but if y ou're brav e, y ou can still try running it. Install .net 2.0 by running winetricks and selecting dotnet20. This is not y et well-supported, but sev eral .NET applications work. See the .NET AppDB pages f or more inf ormation on installing these runtimes. Alternately , y ou can install Mono, an open source implementation of .net 2.0, by running winetricks and selecting mono26. This is not well-supported, and v ery f ew .NET applications actually work with it

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under Wine. See the Mono Project AppDB page f or more inf ormation.

6.7. My application won't run, and says it needs Internet Explorer

Wine uses the core of Firef ox (called Gecko) to implement its own Internet Explorer. In some cases, y ou can make applications which think they need IE happier by running winetricks and selecting gecko and/or fakeie6. Y ou can also try to install the real Internet Explorer using winetricks: see "How do I install Internet Explorer in Wine?" below.

6.8. My application runs, but text areas act strangely (e.g. lines don't wrap, double-clicking doesn't select words)
Y ou may hav e run into a bug in Wine's RICHED20.DLL. Y ou can try using Microsof t's RICHED20.DLL by running winetricks and selecting riched20. This may let y ou work around the problem until the Wine dev elopers f ix the bug.

6.9. My application doesn't run right, and the log says

6.9.1. Too many ope n file s, ulimit -n probably ne e ds to be incre ase d
Y our operating sy stem is probably liv ing in the past, and has too low a hard limit on the number of open f ile descriptors. (See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/663090 f or why raising the hard limit is the right thing to do, and why raising the sof t limit by def ault is dangerous.) For Ubuntu and most modern v ersions of Linux, y ou can do it like this: Edit /etc/security /limits.conf as root, and change the line

* hard nofile 2048 current limit is)

to

(or whatever the

* hard nofile 8192

(The asterisk means 'f or all users'.) Then log out and log in again, and do ulimit -H -n It should show 8192 now, and Wine should hav e access to more f ile descriptors.

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Here's another method that's more portable (might ev en work on Mac OS X), but only works temporarily , and only raises the limit f or apps started f rom the current terminal window:

$ # # $

sudo bash ulimit -n 8192 su yourusername wine yourprogram.exe

6.9.2. pre loade r: Warning: faile d to re se rv e range 00000000-60000000

or

6.9.3. wine v dm: unable to e xe c '<APP NAM E>': DOS me mory range unav ailable
This issue is being f ollowed in bug 12516. The cause is a Linux kernel setting. Run cat /proc/sys /vm/mmap_min_addr"as root, if it does not equal 0 then running sysctl -w vm.mmap_min_addr=0 as root can be used to temporarily f ix the issue; to f ix it permanently , add the line vm.mmap_min_addr=0 to /etc/sysctl.conf. Please record if y ou do this alteration, as the area Wine needs may change. See PreloaderPageZeroProblem f or more inf ormation.

6.9.4. Faile d to use ICM P (ne twork ping), this re quire s spe cial pe rmissions
On *NIX sy stems ICMP ping requires use of raw sockets, which is limited to super user (root) only . And running Wine as root is a bad idea. Fortunately newer v ersions of Linux allow granular permission control to grant only required permissions to specif ied f iles. To allow Wine opening raw sockets run this command:

sudo setcap cap_net_raw+epi /usr/bin /wine-preloader

Note: This works with def ault binary Wine install only on most distros. Self -compiled Wine will be located under /usr/local/bin. 3-rd party Wine wrappers (such as Play OnLinux) might keep Wine binary in other places.

6.10. Graphics
6.10.1. M y application complains about

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be ing unable to change the re solution or color de pth.

Y ou generally need to edit the Screen section of y our /etc/X11 /xorg.conf to support additional color depths and resolutions. There may also be a problem with Xrandr.

6.10.2. The application I am trying to run complains that it ne e ds 256 colors but I hav e millions of colors.
The inability to switch f rom 24bpp mode to 8bpp mode is a limitation of X, not a bug in Wine. See 256ColorMode f or some possible workarounds.

6.10.3. M y X scre e n won't go back to its normal re solution afte r running a game fullscre e n.
Y ou can of ten work around this by changing the screen resolution and then changing it back again under the sy stem pref erences. Alternately , y ou can run this terminal command to restore y our X settings:

xrandr -s 0

6.10.4. I'm using De sktop Effe cts with Compiz, Fusion, or XGL and ge t poor pe rformance /odd me ssage s/broke n applications
Using compositing managers in X11 tends to cripple OpenGL perf ormance or break OpenGL entirely (this does not apply to the Mac OS X compositor, which cannot be disabled). We recommend that y ou disable them entirely bef ore try ing to use Wine. If y ou are using one and experiencing slow perf ormance then please do not f ile bugs in Wine, as these are bugs in y our window manager or y our v ideo driv ers. Also, disabling the Composite extension within /etc/X11/xorg.conf will most certainly prev ent any compositing f rom af f ecting Wine.

6.10.5. Graphics in game s with good ratings in AppDB are scramble d.

Check the game using the latest graphics driv ers. Most AppDB entries are based on NVIDIA/GeForce hardware running the proprietary driv er. ATI/AMD/Radeon cards running the proprietary fglrx driv er

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hav e problems in Wine. As a rule of thumb, at least games that use shaders are broken. See this posting and Wine bug 7411 f or details. Other hardware (Intel/S3/Matrox etc.) will probably run only old (non-shader) games. Compatibility is not well tested. Same f or open source driv ers as their 3D support is ty pically basic only .

6.10.6. Wine displays corrupte d or missing te xt.

This may be bug 16146, caused by the nvidia-96xx legacy driv er, or bug 18120, which af f ects QT 4.5.0 applications. It could also be caused by missing f onts, f ont conf licts, or adding new f onts to Wine. Try using a f resh Wine pref ix (by mov ing or deleting ~/.wine, or changing the $WINEPREFIX env ironment v ariable). If y ou still hav e this problem, try setting the f ollowing in the Wine registry :

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver] "ClientSideWithRender"="N"

Place abov e in a text f ile called norender.txt and it can be inserted into the registry with the command regedit norender.txt. Please apply only as required. (This was reported as being required of OS X on the 1 Dec 2007, and more recently on other platf orms, such as Ubuntu.)

6.10.7. Wine 's windows and fonts are e xtre me ly large , and the wine cfg window doe sn't fit on the scre e n.
Sometimes y ou can use the ALT key and the mouse to mov e the winecfg window so y ou can reach the "Screen Resolution" slider on the Graphics tab; slide it down. Changes will not ef f ect the winecfg window until it's restarted. If that doesn't work, y ou can use this one line registry change (all one line):

echo -e "[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\System \\CurrentControlSet\\Hardware Profiles\\Current\\Software\\Fonts] \n\"LogPixels\"=dword:60\n" | wine regedit If all f ails, y ou could remov e y our ~/.wine directory and reinstall y our Windows applications.

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6.11. Sound
6.11.1. I'm using OSS in Wine and I hav e no sound.
Unless y ou're using a sound card with an emu10k1/2 chipset (SB Liv e!/Audigy ) or another ty pe of card that supports "hardware mixing" then y ou can only ev er hav e one application using sound at the same time. If y ou hav e aRts (KDE sound sy stem), ESD (Gnome sound sy stem) or any music applications open then y ou simply won't hear any thing f rom Wine. Y ou need to kill or close all these programs bef ore being able to get sound f rom Wine. To work out if any thing has locked y our sound-card already , y ou can do cat /dev/urandom >> /dev/dsp. If y ou get an error message it means that something is using it. If y ou get loud static this means that y our sound card is clear and ready f or use.

6.11.2. Running wine cfg se e ms to hang or complain about file s whe n I click the audio tab
The hang is caused by the NAS sound driv er. This causes winecfg to pause f or a while but it should respond ev entually . The only way to get around this is to remov e NAS f rom y our sy stem and/or build Wine without NAS support in the f irst place. If y ou see messages about JACK in the terminal, they can be ignored unless y ou intend to use the JACK driv er. If y ou wish to use the JACK driv er, y ou need to install JACK's libraries onto y our machine bef ore JACK will work.

6.11.3. Audio in game s sounds diffe re nt from running in Windows

A number of DirectSound f eatures are not implemented (correctly ) in Wine y et. Sound ef f ects (echo etc.) are not implemented (Bug 10603) Multi-channel surround audio is not implemented (Bug 11764) 3D sound positioning is not completely correct (Bug 11499) Doppler ef f ect is not implemented (source)

6.11.4. M P3s do not play in Windows M e dia Playe r or applications that de pe nd on it

For MP3 sound to play out of the box in apps that use the WMP engine and codecs, y ou must hav e 32-bit libmpg123 installed on y our sy stem and Wine must hav e been compiled with MP3 support. Not all distro packages prov ide this; openSUSE packages in particular are known to be compiled without MP3 support.

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The workaround f or lack of libmpg123 and/or winemp3.acm is to use the codec installed by WMP9, l3codeca.acm. Copy l3codeca.acm to the winepref ix's /windows/sy stem32 directory (or use winetricks to install WMP9), then create a sy mlink to it named winemp3.acm in the same directory . Wine will then use the nativ e codec to play MP3s. This only af f ects WMP and apps that rely on it f or MP3 play back (including Powerpoint). Apps that install their own MP3 codec, such as Winamp or VLC Play er, should be able to play MP3s without this workaround.

6.12. My CD or DVD disc won't eject

Try [:eject:wine eject] . It is a f unction to f ree up, unlock, and eject the driv e. Make sure that the driv e is mapped as a CD-ROM in winecfg and specif y the driv e letter in the command line, e.g.:

wine eject d:

6.13. My program fails to do networking, but my other applications can get online
Note: These instructions are f or older Wine installs. If y ou're using Wine 1.x and y our application still f ails to do networking, y ou can giv e this a try as well. If y ou're running Wine 1.x and below instructions work f or y ou, file a bug so we can f ix Wine to improv e other people's experience. Y ou need to make sure that y our hostname resolv es to the IP address of y our network interf ace. To v erif y if y ou hav e this problem run hostname -i. If it returned IP address starting f rom "127." then read on. To set this up correctly , y ou can ty pe the f ollowing f rom a terminal:

hostname
This will return y our hostname the way y our computer sees it. Now, y ou need to open an editor with sy stem administrator priv ileges, how y ou do this will depend on the distribution y ou are using. Open the f ile /etc/hosts and see if there is an entry f or y our hostname. Assuming y our hostname is "y ourhost" and y our network IP address is 192.168.0.23, the entry might look like this:

127.0.0.1 yourhost.yourdomain.com
Change this to (or add, if there is no such line):

yourhost

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192.168.0.23 yourhost.yourdomain.com

yourhost

For most Windows games with networking problems, this is all y ou need to get networking to work.

6.14. Why doesn't DNS resolve in 64-bit operating systems?

Many distributions don't prov ide all the 32-bit compatibility libraries that wine needs. In this case, wine needs 32-bit DNS libraries. On Ubuntu/Debian, this package is lib32nss-mdns. To install it on those OSes, use:

sudo apt-get install lib32nss-mdns

For other operating sy stems, the package name and installation method may dif f er. Consult y our distribution's support channels.

6.15. I deleted my Wine menu, and now I can't get it back.

Rather than actually delete any thing, menu editors on Unix desktops simply mark menu entries as hidden so that they don't show up in the menu. Thus, they remain hidden af ter reinstalling the application. First, see if these menu entries can be f ound y our menu editor and re-enabled. This inf ormation is stored in ~/.config/menus/applications.menu . Edit ~/.config/menus/applications.menu and y ou should f ind a section near the end that looks similar to this:

<Menu> <Name>wine-wine</Name> <Deleted/> </Menu>

or perhaps this:

<Menu> <Name>wine-wine</Name> <Menu> <Name>winePrograms</Name> <Menu>

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<Name>wine-Programs-AutoHotkey</Name> <DirectoryDir>/home/user/.local/share /desktop-directories</DirectoryDir> </Menu> </Menu> <Deleted/> </Menu>

Remov e the <Deleted/> line and y our Wine menu will reappear.

6.16. Some key combinations in my application do not work.

Ev en in f ull screen mode, window managers ty pically capture some key s. For example, in KDE and GNOME, Alt+Lef t Click is used to mov e the whole application window by def ault. Thus, this key combination is not av ailable to applications in Wine. Y ou hav e to disable the colliding combinations in y our window manager. For KDE, see Control Center/Window Behav iour or (better) Window-specif ic settings/Workarounds/Block global shortcuts. For GNOME, see Sy stem/Pref erences/Windows and change the "Mov ement Key " setting. Also see Sy stem/Pref erences/Key board Shortcuts f or specif ic key board combinations. (Key words: Key board, Shortcut, Modif ier, Alt, Ctrl, Control.)

6.17. Where can I get further help?

In addition to this wiki, the Wine HQ Documentation and mailing lists. Y ou'll most likely want the wine-users mailing list which also has a f orum interf ace. If y ou're an ISV looking at porting an application with Winelib y ou can also try wine-dev el. For help with a specif ic application, search the Application Database, a place where users share their experiences by submitting test data, tips and tricks, and asking questions. The IRC channel: #WineHQ on irc.f reenode.net. Knowledgeable Wine users hang out there, and of ten dev elopers will lurk there too. See IRC f or more important inf ormation. There's also the comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine Usenet newsgroup. Y ou're more likely to get help on the mailing lists though, as these are what the dev elopers use and monitor.

6.18. I think I've found a bug. How do I report this bug to the Wine programming team?
Bug reports should be submitted to our online Bugzilla sy stem (http://bugs.winehq.org/). To increase dev eloper productiv ity and f acilitate a resolution to submitted bugs, please read the Wiki

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article on Bugs. A poor bug report may be marked INVALID and closed, leav ing y ou no closer to resolv ing y our problem. High quality bug reports are an essential part of making Wine better. Please note that y ou should generally av oid submitting bug reports if y ou hav e used any third party applications or nativ e DLL ov errides.

7. Using Wine
7.1. How do I wipe the virtual Windows installation?
Y ou can remov e y our v irtual Windows installation and start f rom scratch by either remov ing the hidden .wine directory in y our home f older. Please note that in the following commands there should be no spaces in the path, particularly between $HOME/ and .whatever.

rm -rf $HOME/.wine
or renaming it (in case y ou want to keep it f or a backup):

mv $HOME/.wine $HOME/.wine-old
This will leav e dangling MIME entries and desktop entries in ~/.local /share. To remov e these, see How do I uninstall Windows applications? Alternativ ely , y ou can stop Wine f rom creating them in the f irst place.

7.2. Can I store the virtual Windows installation somewhere other than ~/.wine?
Y es: ~/.wine is just the def ault Wine "pref ix" (a.k.a. "conf iguration directory " or "bottle"). Y ou can change which pref ix Wine uses by changing the WINEPREFIX env ironment v ariable (outside Wine). To do this, run something like the f ollowing in a terminal:

export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-new wine winecfg

Wine will then create a new pref ix in ~/.wine-new. To use the def ault pref ix, use the command unset WINEPREFIX . Or just set WINEPREFIX to ~/.wine. Y ou can rename, mov e, copy and delete pref ixes without af f ecting

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others, and each pref ix has its own wineserver instance. Wherev er y ou see "~/.wine" or "$HOME/.wine" in this Wiki, y ou can usually replace it with "$WINEPREFIX".

7.3. How can I run two programs as if they were on different computers?
Example: Y ou hav e serv er and client programs. One won't run in the presence of the other. Using dif f erent Wine pref ixes will help y ou here, since they simulate two Windows computers, in essence. Run the f irst program as normal:

wine first-program.exe
The second needs to be run in a dif f erent pref ix, so we need to change the WINEPREFIX v ariable:

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-second" wine second-program.exe

The first-program.exe and second-program.exe can be two copies of the same program.

7.4. I want my Windows application to be able to launch a native application to open documents
Y ou can start nativ e applications directly f rom Wine only if y ou specif y the f ull path or use the shell:

/usr/bin/glxgears # or /bin/sh -c glxgears

Y ou might also need winepath to translate the f ilename f rom Windows f ormat to Linux f ormat (see next question).

7.5. I want to associate a native program with a file type in Wine

There are two way s using which y ou can associate a nativ e program with a f ile ty pe. The f irst method is to use winebrowser and an alternativ e would be to write a shell script. The example below uses winebrowser to launch the def ault PDF

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handler on y our sy stem (on a Unix desktop it uses xdg-open). Sav e the lines below to a f ile pdf.reg.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf] @="PDFfile" "Content Type"="application/pdf" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PDFfile\Shell \Open\command] @="winebrowser \"%1\""

Import the .reg f ile into the registry using the command 'regedit $HOME/pdf.reg'. Another option is to use a shell script to call a nativ e application. Sav e it as run_linx_program under $HOME/bin:

#!/bin/sh $1 "`wine winepath -u "$2"`"

Don't f orget to run 'chmod a+x $HOME/bin/run_linx_program' to make it executable. Also make sure that $HOME/bin directory is in y our $PATH. Otherwise it will not work. To associate (say ) .pdf f iles with the acroread Linux program sav e the f ollowing as "$HOME/pdf.reg" and then import it with the command 'regedit $HOME/pdf.reg':

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf] @="PDFfile" "Content Type"="application/pdf" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PDFfile\Shell \Open\command] @="/bin/sh run_linx_program acroread \"%1\""
Y ou can reuse this script and just edit the registry f ile. For example to associate .doc documents with OpenOf f ice (oof f ice):

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.doc] @="DOCfile" "Content Type"="application/msword" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DOCfile\Shell \Open\command] @="/bin/sh run_linx_program ooffice \"%1\""

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7.6. What is this "winetricks" thing? Where do I get it?

winetricks is a shell script that downloads missing DLLs and f onts f or y ou f rom the best known source. It was written to help Wine dev elopers, but it turned out to be usef ul f or end users, too. See the wiki page about winetricks f or more inf o.

7.7. How do I install Internet Explorer in Wine?

If y ou just want an application to think y ou hav e IE installed, see My application won't run, and say s it needs Internet Explorer abov e. The Wine project does not support installing the real Internet Explorer, as it requires a huge number of nativ e DLLs, which is hard to conf igure. If y ou really need the real IE use winetricks. Set y our f ake Windows v ersion to win2k and then select 'ie6' or 'ie7'. IE installed f rom winetricks is f ar f rom f ully f unctional, but works well enough to, e.g., test web page rendering. Please do not ask the Wine project f or help if y ou run in to problems. Y ou should put IE in a separate winepref ix, with whatev er app really needs it. Y ou may also try commercial solutions, such as CrossOv er and Bordeaux, but if y ou do so and run into problems, do not seek help on the f orum/mailing list or IRC, as third party applications such as these are not supported here.

7.8. How do I get Wine to launch an application in a virtual desktop?

Y ou can do this with winecf g. Add the application in the Applications tab and then, in the Graphics tab, enable "Emulate a v irtual desktop". Y ou can also use the f ollowing command (f or wine-0.9.60 and older, this is the only method av ailable):

wine explorer /desktop=name,1024x768 program.exe

Replace program.exe with the name of y our program, and change the resolution to the size of the v irtual desktop y ou want. Changing name allows y ou to open sev eral desktops simultaneously .

7.9. How do I know what version of Wine I have?

Open up a terminal and run wine --version. It will say something

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like "wine-1.1.25"; if y ou are using Git then y ou will hav e a v ersion along the lines of "wine-1.1.25-311-g3d6bb38". TIP: Y ou can f ind out what the latest release of Wine is f rom WineHQ's main page. Currently , Wine dev elopment releases come out ev ery two weeks. Y our operating sy stem may ship with an out of date (obsolete) v ersion of Wine. Depending on what OS y ou use, y ou may be able to add an update source to y our package management sy stem to keep up to date. Check the downloads page f or details.

7.10. How does the Wine version numbering system work?

Each v ersion of Wine has a release tag, in the f ollowing f ormat: wine-x.y.z This represents Wine v ersion x.y.z. (For a list of tags, see here.) x is the major v ersion number. This has changed precisely once since the current v ersion numbering sy stem was introduced, and is unlikely to change f or a while. y is the minor v ersion number. This changes ev ery f ew y ears. If y is ev en, then this is a "stable" v ersion: later releases are unlikely to break much. If y is odd, then this is a "dev elopment" v ersion: later releases may cause regressions. z is the release number. For dev elopment releases, this is incremented ev ery two weeks. For stable releases, this is incremented ev ery f ew months. If y ou are using Git, the tag will be generated by the git-describe command, and looks like: wine-x.y.z-n-gccccccc Where n is the number of patches/commits applied since x.y.z was released, and ccccccc is the f irst f ew hex digits of the most recent commit's id. Examples: wine-1.1.19-228-g1e256e4, wine-1.1.25-311g3d6bb38, wine-1.1.32-584-g10b0b86. Just bef ore a stable release of Wine, there are so-called "release candidates", which hav e tags of the f orm: wine-x.y-rcn Which is the nth release candidate f or Wine x.y. Examples: Release tag wine-0.9.60 wine-0.9.61 wine-1.0-rc1 wine-1.0-rc2 Date 18 Apr 2008 2 May 2008 Last beta 9 May 2008 First release candidate 23 May 2008 Note

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wine-1.0-rc3 wine-1.0-rc4 wine-1.0-rc5 wine-1.0 wine-1.1.0 wine-1.1.1 wine-1.1.2 wine-1.2 ...

30 May 2008 6 Jun 2008 13 Jun 2008 17 Jun 2008 First "stable" v ersion 27 Jun 2008 First "dev elopment" v ersion 11 Jul 2008 25 Jul 2008 16 Jul 2010 Second "stable" v ersion

7.11. Should I run Wine as root?

NEVER run Wine as root! Doing so giv es Windows programs (and v iruses) f ull access to y our computer and ev ery piece of media attached to it. Running with sudo also has these same risks but with the added bonus of breaking the permissions on y our ~/.wine f older in the process. If y ou hav e run Wine with sudo y ou need to f ix the permission errors as described in the next question, and then run winecf g to set Wine up again. Y ou should alway s run Wine as the normal user y ou use to login. For Linux sy stems, all ideas that Wine needs root can be solv ed through Posix Capabilities (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5737) or Posix File Capabilities (http://www.ibm.com/dev eloperworks/library /l-posixcap.html) or correcting other security settings. As f ar as Windows programs are concerned, y ou are running with administrator priv ileges. If an application complains about a lack of administrator priv ileges, f ile a bug; running Wine as root probably won't help.

7.12. I ran wine with sudo or as root. How do I fix my permission errors?
Y ou need to f ix the permissions on y our ~/.wine directory , this is where all Wine state, conf iguration and any important data y ou might hav e such as installed programs, sav ed data within Wine programs, etc. are stored. Once y ou delete or f ix the permssions on this directory , rerun Wine as a regular user alway s! Run the f ollowing to f ix the permissions on y our ~/.wine directory if it now has root permissions.

cd ~

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sudo chown -R $USER:$USER .wine

7.13. Which sound driver should I select in winecfg?

As of Wine 0.9.47 y ou shouldn't need to conf igure it any more, def aults should work just f ine. For Wine 0.9.46 ALSA and OSS should work equally well. For Wine v ersions before 0.9.42 OSS works best, af ter that ALSA is slightly behind OSS since it might miss some v oice chat capability .

7.14. Why isn't PulseAudio available?

The Wine project has decided not to pursue a Pulse driv er f or Wine at this time. We f eel it is best to keep working on the more mature Wine ALSA driv er. We are aware that some distributions use Pulse as the def ault, and this is unf ortunate. PulseAudio is also known to be buggy when emulating ALSA/OSS and should be disabled when using Wine. There is an unof f icial PulseAudio driv er f or Wine, but it is unsupported. Do not submit bug reports while using it. Bug tracking this issue: bug 10495.

7.15. How can I make Wine fonts anti-aliased?

Support f or subpixel f ont rendering was added to Wine in v ersion 1.1.12, but it may not be enabled. Use winetricks and select one of the f ontsmooth-gray , f ontsmooth-rgb and f ontsmooth-bgr options. Bugs tracking these issues: bug 10342 and bug 16729.

7.16. How do I change the DPI (font size)?

First, y ou should try editing with winecf g. Go to the Graphics tab, and slide the "Screen Resolution" slider accordingly . Changes will not ef f ect the winecf g window until y ou restart it. If windows and f onts are so big y ou can't get to the controls in winecf g, see "Wine's windows and f onts are extremely large, and the winecf g window doesn't f it on the screen".

7.17. How do I edit the Wine registry?

The Wine registry is stored in the .reg f iles in ~/.wine, howev er y ou should not edit these f iles by hand due to the encoding that they use. Alway s use the regedit program that comes with Wine. This can be run by ty ping regedit in the terminal. Wine's regedit is v irtually identical to the Windows v ersion of regedit and also supports importing and exporting of registry f iles. NEVER try and import y our

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entire Windows registry , this will just break Wine. See also: Usef ulRegistry Key s

7.18. How do I configure a proxy?

If y ou want to use a proxy serv er f or all HTTP connections, simply set the http_proxy env ironment v ariable. On many Linux distributions, conf iguring a network proxy , e.g. with the Network Proxy tool, does this f or y ou automatically . Alternativ ely , y ou can conf igure a proxy in the registry . There are separate locations f or wininet.dll and winhttp.dll. For wininet, use regedit to add the f ollowing v alues to the [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows \CurrentVersion\Internet Settings] key :

"ProxyEnable"=dword:00000001 "ProxyServer"="proxy-serveraddress:port"
At present, Wine's wininet.dll does not support proxy autoconf iguration (PAC) scripts. For winhttp, y ou'll need to use the proxycfg.exe utility to conf igure the registry . This utility is av ailable in the sy stem32 directory of a Windows installation, and MSDN describes its usage.

7.19. How do I get a debug trace?

When f iling bugs, it is of ten necessary to get a trace (generally +relay,+seh, but y ou might be asked f or specif ic debug channels). To retriev e a trace, run:

WINEDEBUG=+relay,+seh,+tid wine your_program.exe &> /tmp/output.txt

Then attach /tmp/output.txt to the bug. If the resulting f ile is larger than 1 MB, compress it with bzip2 or rzip -9 bef ore attaching. There are some cases where the bug seems to disappear when WINEDEBUG is used with the right channel. Please mention that in the bug report. For a list of debug channels that are av ailable in Wine, see DebugChannels

7.20. What applications/services conflict with Wine?

Many distributions are mov ing towards enabling Compiz/Bery l/other ey e candy by def ault. The problem is that these programs conf lict with Wine ov er the display driv er. Disable these programs bef ore using any Wine applications (especially games, or when noticing weird window problems). Also, disabling the Composite extension in

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/etc/X11/xorg.conf will most certainly prev ent compositing f rom af f ecting Wine. Pulseaudio is also known to be buggy when emulating Alsa/OSS and conf licts with Wine. Key board switching tools such as xneur (gxneur, kxneur) and SCIM hav e been reported to conf lict with key board input in Wine.

8. Applications
8.1. Does Wine support DirectX? Can I install Microsoft's DirectX under Wine?
Wine itself prov ides a DirectX implementation that, although it has a f ew bugs lef t, should run f ine. Wine supports DirectX 9.0c at this time. Plans f or DirectX 10 are underway . If you attempt to install Microsoft's DirectX, you will run into problems. It is not recommended nor supported by Wine HQ to attempt this. Y ou can install the runtime, but it will not run. The runtime needs access to the Windows driv ers, and Wine cannot access them f or obv ious reasons. The only nativ e Microsof t DLLs that could be usef ul any way are the d3dx9_xx.dll ty pe ones, and these require y ou to accept Microsof t's license. Additionally , v ersions of these DLLs are now part of the Wine tree. So, as Wine improv es these DLLs will only become less relev ant. That said, there are some guides out there which describe how y ou can install Microsof t's DirectX. We reiterate: It is not recommended nor supported by Wine HQ to attempt this. Furthermore it is considered of f topic in Wine HQ support mediums (such as the f orums). Please use a clean Wine conf iguration f older bef ore seeking help. (Y ou may need to rm -rf ~/.wine and re-install y our Windows applications.)

8.2. How come Wine doesn't work well with copy protection?
Copy protection uses sev eral "dirty " methods to detect if discs are "real" or not. Some of these methods work in Wine but most do not, such as the extremely inv asiv e StarForce sy stem. Wine would need to be altered to allow f or almost rootkit-like f unctionality of programs to get some of these copy protection schemes to work, so support is likely to be a long time of f if ev er. (Some people use illegally modif ied or "cracked" games with the copy protection remov ed, but the Wine project cannot adv ocate that.) See also our page on copy protection.

8.3. I followed a howto I found on a website, and the application still

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doesn't work.
There are many unof f icial howtos f or v arious apps posted on blogs and f orums. They are rarely maintained by their authors, and because of Wine's rapid rate of dev elopment, ev en ones that were correct at the time they were posted can quickly become outdated. Apply ing tweaks that are no longer needed in current Wine can actually prev ent an app that now runs f ine without tweaks f rom working at all (Of f ice 2007 is a prime example). The only howtos supported here are the ones on this site. If y ou insist on f ollowing an outside one, ask its author f or help. If in doubt, start again installing the app in a f resh winepref ix and ask f or help on the user f orum.

8.4. I used a third party application (PlayOnLinux, WineBottler, etc.) to install or manage applications in Wine and need help.
Consult the support channels f or whatev er third party application y ou used. Links to some of these outside applications are prov ided as a conv enience on the Third Party Applications page, but they are not supported here. Bef ore seeking help on the f orum/mailing list/IRC or f iling bugs, reinstall y our Windows application using plain Wine.

8.5. My application worked with an older version of Wine, but now it's broken!
These are called regressions. Please perf orm a regression test to identif y which patch caused the regression, then f ile a bug report and add the regression key word - we'll pay special attention to it, since they 're a lot easier to f ix when caught early .

8.6. I really need this particular application to work. How can I go about making this happen?
We're glad y ou asked. Please see our Helping Wine page f or some suggestions. Brief ly , y ou can improv e Wine y ourself , conv ince someone else to do it f or y ou, or try some complicated hacks inv olv ing nativ e Windows DLLs rather than Wine's unf inished ones.

8.7. I'm writing a Windows app. How can it detect if it's running under

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Wine?
This is a bad idea. See the Dev eloper FAQ.

9. Performance
9.1. What are the system requirements for Wine?
The rule of thumb is that if y our application runs f ine in Windows, it should run f ine on the same sy stem using Wine. Wine, along with the operating sy stem y ou use to run it, generally requires less disk space and memory than Windows itself . If y ou're not currently running a Windows application, Wine won't consume any resources at all other than about 20 megaby tes of disk space.

9.2. My 3D application/game is very slow (fps).

Usually a 3D perf ormance issue, indicates that something is wrong with y our OpenGL 3D driv ers. See 3DDriv erIssues f or more inf ormation.

9.3. Is Wine slower than just using Windows?

Actually , Wine is sometimes f aster. The speed of an application depends on a lot of f actors: the av ailable hardware and their driv ers, the quality of the code in the APIs the application uses, and the quality of the code in the underly ing operating sy stem. Driv er code matters a lot. If y ou're running a graphics-heav y application using a v ideo card with v ery poor driv ers such as an ATI card under Linux, perf ormance will degrade substantially . On the other hand, Linux has superior memory management, and comes out ahead of Windows in many CPU-related tasks; see benchmarks f or more inf ormation. Sometimes, bugs in Wine can make applications excessiv ely slow; see Perf ormance and Perf ormance-related bugs. That said, Wine works on correctness f irst, perf ormance second.

9.4. I get lots of "fixme:" messages in the terminal and Wine runs a bit slow.
Ignore them. Generally speaking, a f ixme message will not make much sense to someone unf amiliar with Wine dev elopment. They are f or Wine dev elopers. Also, it's important to understand that f ixme messages of ten do not indicate a serious problem. Many applications will work f ine ev en though Wine prints a f ew fixme messages. That

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said, they can still sometimes prov ide insight into how a particular application works (or doesn't work). If there are a v ery large number of these messages scrolling repeatedly , y ou can sometimes speed Wine up a little by turning them of f altogether. Y ou can do so by setting the WINEDEBUG env ironment v ariable to -all. For example, y our command line could look something like:

WINEDEBUG=-all wine program.exe

More adv anced users and programmers interested in debugging Wine should see DebugChannels and the Dev eloper Documentation wiki pages. Here's an example to selectiv ely turn of f fixme messages f rom dsound and part of D3D only :

WINEDEBUG=fixme-dsound,fixmed3d_surface wine program.exe

10. Risks
10.1. Wine is malware-compatible
Just because Wine runs on a non-Windows OS doesn't mean y ou're protected f rom v iruses, trojans, and other f orms of malware. There are sev eral things y ou can do to protect y ourself : 1. Nev er run executables f rom sites y ou don't trust. Inf ections hav e already happened. 2. In web browsers and mail clients, be suspicious of links to URLs y ou don't understand and trust. 3. Nev er run any GUI application (including Wine applications) as root. (See abov e. ) 4. Use a v irus scanner, e.g. ClamAV is a f ree v irus scanner y ou might consider using if y ou are worried about an inf ection; see also Ubuntu's notes on how to use ClamAV. No v irus scanner is 100% ef f ectiv e, though. 5. Consider remov ing the def ault Wine Z: driv e, which maps to the unix root directory . This is only a weak def ense, but it might help against some attacks. The downside to this is y ou won't be able to run Windows applications that aren't reachable from a Wine drive (like C: or D:). This includes inability to install Wine-gecko (see bug 19873). A work around is to copy /mov e/sy mlink downloaded installers to ~/.wine/drive_c bef ore y ou can run them. 6. If y ou're running applications that y ou suspect to be inf ected, run them as their own Linux user or in a v irtual machine. (The ZeroWine malware analy zer works this way .)

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10.2. How good is Wine at sandboxing Windows apps?

Wine does not sandbox in any way at all. When run under Wine, a Windows app can do any thing y our user can. Wine does not (and cannot) stop a Windows app directly making nativ e sy scalls, messing with y our f iles, altering y our startup scripts, or doing other nasty things. Y ou need to use AppArmor, SELinux or some ty pe of v irtual machine if y ou want to properly sandbox Windows apps. That said, winetricks does hav e a sandbox v erb that does at least a partial job of isolating Wine programs f rom the rest of y our sy stem. It protects against errors rather than malice. It's usef ul f or, e.g., keeping games f rom sav ing their settings in random subdirectories of y our home directory .

10.3. Nautilus can delete your home directory when you empty the trash!
In some v ersions of Gnome (2.21.90?), if y ou mov e ~/.wine to trash, and empty the trash, ev ery thing that y ou can write to in y our root f ilesy stem is then deleted (including the contents of y our home f older). This is said to be f ixed in Gnome 2.21.92. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/188361 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-applets /+bug/195207 If y ou are logged in as root, this bug is worse, it can delete y our entire hard driv e.

FAQ (last edited 2011-02-12 02:11:29 by VitaliyMargolen)

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