Microsoft KB Archive/189249

= How to determine which 32-bit Windows version is being used =

Article ID: 189249

Article Last Modified on 9/3/2004

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications 5.0

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This article was previously published under Q189249



SUMMARY
An application may need to perform tasks differently depending on which operating system is running on the computer. This article shows, by example, how to differentiate between Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Window NT 3.51, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft Windows 2000, and Microsoft Windows XP.

The Win32 GetVersionEx function returns information that a program can use to identify the operating system. Among those values are the major and minor revision numbers and a platform identifier. With the introduction of Windows 98, it now takes a more involved logical evaluation to determine which version of Windows is in use. The listing below provides the data needed to evaluate the OSVERSIONINFO structure populated by the GetVersionEx function:



Step-by-step example
 Start a new Standard EXE project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default. From the Project menu, add a Standard Module to the project.  Insert the following code into Module1: Public Declare Function GetVersionExA Lib "kernel32" _ (lpVersionInformation As OSVERSIONINFO) As Integer Public Type OSVERSIONINFO dwOSVersionInfoSize As Long dwMajorVersion As Long dwMinorVersion As Long dwBuildNumber As Long dwPlatformId As Long szCSDVersion As String * 128 End Type Public Function getVersion As String Dim osinfo As OSVERSIONINFO Dim retvalue As Integer osinfo.dwOSVersionInfoSize = 148 osinfo.szCSDVersion = Space$(128) retvalue = GetVersionExA(osinfo) With osinfo Select Case .dwPlatformId Case 1 Select Case .dwMinorVersion Case 0 getVersion = "Windows 95" Case 10 getVersion = "Windows 98" Case 90 getVersion = "Windows Millennium" End Select Case 2 Select Case .dwMajorVersion Case 3 getVersion = "Windows NT 3.51" Case 4 getVersion = "Windows NT 4.0" Case 5 If .dwMinorVersion = 0 Then getVersion = "Windows 2000" Else getVersion = "Windows XP" End If                   End Select Case Else getVersion = "Failed" End Select End With End Function

  Add the following line of code to the Load event of Form1: MsgBox GetVersion  Run the project, and note that a message box displays the correct Windows version.

