Detect Windows version in .net

c# .net windows operating-system
Hossein Moradinia picture Hossein Moradinia · May 12, 2010 · Viewed 122.2k times · Source

How can I detect the Windows OS versions in .net?

What code can I use?

Answer

Daniel DiPaolo picture Daniel DiPaolo · May 12, 2010

System.Environment.OSVersion has the information you need for distinguishing most Windows OS major releases, but not all. It consists of three components which map to the following Windows versions:

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                    |   PlatformID    |   Major version   |   Minor version   |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Windows 95         |  Win32Windows   |         4         |          0        |
| Windows 98         |  Win32Windows   |         4         |         10        |
| Windows Me         |  Win32Windows   |         4         |         90        |
| Windows NT 4.0     |  Win32NT        |         4         |          0        |
| Windows 2000       |  Win32NT        |         5         |          0        |
| Windows XP         |  Win32NT        |         5         |          1        |
| Windows 2003       |  Win32NT        |         5         |          2        |
| Windows Vista      |  Win32NT        |         6         |          0        |
| Windows 2008       |  Win32NT        |         6         |          0        |
| Windows 7          |  Win32NT        |         6         |          1        |
| Windows 2008 R2    |  Win32NT        |         6         |          1        |
| Windows 8          |  Win32NT        |         6         |          2        |
| Windows 8.1        |  Win32NT        |         6         |          3        |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Windows 10         |  Win32NT        |        10         |          0        |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

For a library that allows you to get a more complete view of the exact release of Windows that the current execution environment is running in, check out this library.

Important note: if your executable assembly manifest doesn't explicitly state that your exe assembly is compatible with Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.0, System.Environment.OSVersion will return Windows 8 version, which is 6.2, instead of 6.3 and 10.0! Source: here.

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