When a wow64 process writes values containing %ProgramFiles% or %CommonProgramFiles% to the registry, the wow64 registry redirection logic remaps the values to %ProgramFiles(x86)% and %CommonProgramFiles(x86)%.

XPe tools are no exception to this behavior. As a result, the registry hives of runtime XPe image have values %ProgramFiles(x86)% or %CommonProgramFiles(x86)% whereas these should be %ProgramFiles% or %CommonProgramFiles%. An example of this is the registry value ProgramFilesPath of registry key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion.

A workaround for this issue is to manually edit these registry values using 64 bit version of regedit.exe.
Build the XPe runtime image.

• Run 64 bit version of regedit.exe located in the Windows directory.
• Load all the registry hives of the runtime image.
• In the hives, search for occurrences of %ProgramFiles(x86)% and %CommonProgramFiles(x86)% and replace them with %ProgramFiles% and %CommonProgramFiles% .
• Unload the hives.