Java's "os.name" for Windows 10?

Question

In Java, we can see the property value of os.name to know the name of the underlying operating system: System.getProperty("os.name").

For each edition of Windows, it used to return always the exact name of the OS: Windows XP for XP, Windows Vista for Vista, Windows 7 for Seven, Windows 8.1 for 8.1, and so on...

The problem is: I just updated my Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 using the released Microsoft updater, and it seems like this property still remains Windows 8.1:

public class OSTest {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(System.getProperty("os.name"));
  }
}

How can I create a workaround for this? And, does anyone know if this problem persists if installing a fresh Windows 10 copy - that is, this bug is caused by the Microsoft auto-updater -?

Answer 1

This is a known problem JDK-8066504 that has been fixed in upcoming Java 8 update 60.

The reason is GetVersionEx function has changed its behavior since Windows 8.1.

There are multiple possible workarounds, see MSDN article.

The trivial one is to exec cmd.exe /c ver.

The other is to look at the version information of one of the system files, e.g. kernel32.dll.