How do I tell what version and edition of Windows is on the filesystem?

Question

I am attempting to recover an old computer that won't boot and I'm not sure what version of Windows it is running. How do I tell simply by examining the file system?

I am fairly confident it is either Vista or Windows 7. There is a small chance it is Windows Server 2008.

Answer 1

Your best bet is going to be finding the properties of a Windows Executable (such as explorer.exe). In my case it's File and Product version is 6.1.7601.17567

6.0.xxxx.xxxxx will denote Windows Vista (with 6000, 6001 and 6002 being RTM, SP1 and SP2 respectively).

6.1.xxxx.xxxxx will denote Windows 7 (with 7600 and 7601 being RTM and SP1).

The same version numbers will apply for Windows server as well so I'm not sure how you'd tell the difference with those using this method.

Answer 2

Look at the file

C:\Windows\System32\License.rtf

Can be found for all these Windows operating systems

Vista, W7, W8, W8.1

These License rtf will have the Version of Windows and the Edition also, Windows 7 Pro for example.

Windows 10 has the rtf file but does not show edition, but if it has the arbitration clause note at the top you know it is W10, or use the explorer trick in Matthew Steeples answer.

To find the Windows 10 product type (Home Pro etc) type see Moif Murphy's answer further down this page

Answer 3

Using the registry you can look up version and edition

I found this answer over at Stackoverflow to the question Determine Windows Version, Edition and Service Pack OF AN OFFLINE DISK IMAGE

Use the values under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. I presume you know where to find that hive?! The respective hive can be found under %SystemRoot%\System32\config with the name SOFTWARE.

Side-note: you can attempt to verify your results by looking at some well-known files (e.g. kernel32.dll, ntdll.dll) and into their version information resource (what you're looking for is the file version: with, e.g. GetFileVersionInfo()).

Edition values, if that's needed, can be found at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ProductOptions.

More specifically, how to load the hive of another registry:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/regedit_load_hive.mspx?mfr=true

Answer 4

If you have Linux on the same system, you could boot into Linux, ensure the Windows partition is mounted (for instance here it's in /mnt/C) and then do strings /mnt/C/Windows/System32/ntoskrnl.exe 2>/dev/null | grep amd64. For me in printed 9600.18258.amd64fre.winblue_ltsb.160303-0600, and googling for winblue indicates that this was the code name for Windows 8.1.

Answer 5

If you can still run executables from that filesystem, you can run C:\Windows\System32\winver.exe

Answer 6

If you don't have a running Windows and want to find the information from a Linux machine, you can use hivexget to read the registry file on the disk.

For Debian-based systems, install it with sudo apt install libhivex-bin.

Example (with grep to make the output shorter):

# hivexget /mnt/tmp/WINDOWS/system32/config/software 'Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion' \
| egrep 'ProductName|CSDVersion|"ProductId'
"ProductName"="Microsoft Windows XP"
"CSDVersion"="Service Pack 3"
"ProductId"="76487-OEM-0011903-00101"

Remove the | egrep ... part to see all values under that key.

Answer 7

If you boot into Windows installation media (say USB stick), and press [SHIFT] + [F10] to get the command prompt, you could query which drive letter corresponds to the original OS drive in question, and then get the version info of a program like ntoskrnl.exe. For example to explore the installed disks and related drive letters,

$ wmic diskdrive get model,name,serialnumber
$ wmic logicaldisk get description,deviceid,volumename
$ wmic datafile where name="<DRIVE LETTER>:\\Windows\\System32\\ntoskrnl.exe" get Version /value

Version 10.0.15063.413

Or using the method from @beyondtime, which is less typing but omits the decimal part of the build number

$ type "<DRIVE LETTER>:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Diagnosis\osver.txt"

10.0.15063

So here the OS installed on the indicated drive letter is Windows 10, Build 15063.413. A google search shows this to be Windows 10 version 1703 | Redstone 2 | Creators Update.

As a bonus, if you want to see the last time that OS was booted, you can do

$ dir /ah /tw <DRIVE LETTER>:\pagefile.sys

01/31/2017  03:04 PM   ......  pagefile.sys

You can probably determine when the OS was originally installed by reviewing the creation time of the hidden files and folders at the root of the drive:

$ dir /ah /tc "<DRIVE LETTER>:\"

And to shutdown when you're finished:

$ wpeutil shutdown

Answer 8

Open the file bootmgr in notepad it is located on the hard drive you are wanting to know the version of it will be a hidden file so select show hidden files in folder options sorted

Answer 9

Get Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder. The portable free version works fine. Safest to get it from their website magicaljellybean.com or sofpedia etc.

Start it up. Under the tools menu, select >> load hive. It then shows all your drives, select the windows folder of the drive in question. It instantly provides the version and keys.

Answer 10

For Windows 10 one can use Wordpad.exe, notepad.exe on Windows OS for analyzing
C:\\ProgramData\Microsoft\Diagnosis\osver.txt .

On Unix systems a console command like
cat <Windows system root partition>/ProgramData/Microsoft/Diagnosis/osver.txt
shows version number.

Example for OS build number: 10.0.18362 (without .116 - .267@2019-07-26)