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28 votes for this article.

Popularity: 6.53 Rating: 4.51 out of 5

Introduction

Sometimes you need to know a very simple thing, like "Is it Windows NT?". Some of the solutions to this problem are excellent and very thorough, but seem to be overkill. But when you try to find out what it takes to determine what OS your program is running on, then you find there is no one place to go to.

What Microsoft Says

The facts about what data are returned by GetVersionEx are scattered around Microsoft site. Here are a few articles I have tracked down:

As you will see from reading them, these articles are not complete.

Table of Windows Version Numbers

I have pulled together following table from many different sources, including Usenet news groups, searching web sites, and reading code here and on other developer sites. It is only a beginning, and if you have knowledge to share please email me and I will acknowledge your contribution.

	`dwPlatformID`	`dwMajorVersion`	`dwMinorVersion`	`dwBuildNumber`
95	1	4	0	950
95 SP1	1	4	0	> 950 && <= 1080
95 OSR2	1	4	< 10	> 1080
98	1	4	10	1998
98 SP1	1	4	10	>1998 && < 2183
98 SE	1	4	10	>= 2183
Me	1	4	90	3000

NT 3.51	2	3	51	1057
NT 4	2	4	0	1381
2000	2	5	0	2195
XP	2	5	1

CE 1.0	3	1	0
CE 2.0	3	2	0
CE 2.1	3	2	1
CE 3.0	3	3	0

How to use this information

I have developed a simple function which uses this table to return a single value that can be used in applications. The function is called GetWinVer and it is in FontFile demo here.

Future Enhancements

Depending on what readers want to see, there are several areas for new entries:

Windows versions prior to Win95
CE versions
Service pack information for NT

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

About the Author

Hans Dietrich

Member

I attended St. Michael's College of the University of Toronto, with the intention of becoming a priest. A friend in the University's Computer Science Department got me interested in programming, and I have been hooked ever since.

Recently, I have moved to Los Angeles where I am doing consulting and development work.

Occupation:	Software Developer (Senior)
Company:	Hans Dietrich Software
Location:	United States

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FirstPrevNext

How to get vista version? (Home Basic, Ultimate...)

Mason Hou

18:50 13 Apr '07

I want to get the vista version. (ie. vista Home Basic, Ultimate, ..., etc)
I use OSVERSIONINFOEX struct and GetVersionEx API by kernel32.dll, but no parameter can use to judge it.

By the way, I find that "MSDN online" has new OSVERSIONINFOEX struct. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724833.aspx
Does I can use new parameter "WORD wSuiteMask" to judge vista version ?

By this method, I always get the value 0x00000100 on the different vista OS.

example code:
typedef struct _OSVERSIONINFOEXVISTA {
DWORD dwOSVersionInfoSize;
DWORD dwMajorVersion;
DWORD dwMinorVersion;
DWORD dwBuildNumber;
DWORD dwPlatformId;
TCHAR szCSDVersion[128];
WORD wServicePackMajor;
WORD wServicePackMinor;
WORD wSuiteMask;
BYTE wProductType;
BYTE wReserved;
} OSVERSIONINFOEXVISTA, *POSVERSIONINFOEXVISTA, *LPOSVERSIONINFOEXVISTA;

void CXTestGetWinVerDlg::OnButton1()
{
// TODO: Add your control notification handler code here

OSVERSIONINFOEXVISTA m_Info;
::ZeroMemory(&versionInfo, sizeof(OSVERSIONINFOEXVISTA));
m_Info.dwOSVersionInfoSize = sizeof(OSVERSIONINFOEXVISTA);
HMODULE dllHandle = NULL;
dllHandle = LoadLibrary(_T("kernel32.dll"));
if(dllHandle != NULL){
BOOL (WINAPI *GetVersionExVISTA)(LPOSVERSIONINFO lpVersionInfo);
GetVersionExVISTA = NULL;
(FARPROC&)GetVersionExVISTA = GetProcAddress(dllHandle,"GetVersionExA");
if(GetVersionExVISTA != NULL){
GetVersionExVISTA((OSVERSIONINFO *)&m_Info);
if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000004){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_BACKOFFICE");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000400){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_BLADE");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00004000){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_COMPUTE_SERVER");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000080){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_DATACENTER");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000002){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_ENTERPRISE");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000040){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_EMBEDDEDNT");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000200){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_PERSONAL");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000100){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_SINGLEUSERTS");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000001){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_SMALLBUSINESS");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000020){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_SMALLBUSINESS_RESTRICTED");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00002000){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_STORAGE_SERVER");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00000010){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_TERMINAL");
}else if(m_Info.wSuiteMask & 0x00008000){
strValue = _T("VER_SUITE_WH_SERVER");
}
}
FreeLibrary(dllHandle);
dllHandle = NULL;
}
}