Wonder what version of Windows Operating System you’re running?
Not sure where to go to look?
I’m going to show you how to find out, coming up now.
Hello, everybody, my name is Adam Gordon,
an edutainer here at ITProTV.
I’m here to talk to you about how you can figure out
what version of the Windows Operating System you’re running.
Now, we’re going to be able to take a look at this
across multiple different versions
of the Windows Server Operating System, but guess what?
We don’t have to run those individual versions
to show you how to do this,
because it’s the same on Server 2016, Server 2019,
and even the brand new Server 2022.
I’m going to use Windows Server 2019 to show you how to do this.
There are four or five different ways,
we’ll go through all them quickly,
but they’re all going to work across
all those version of the operating systems,
and guess what,
we can even do this on Windows 10 and Windows 11,
it works there, too.
Join me here, let’s take a look.
I’m going to be running Windows Server 2019
as a virtual machine,
just to make it simple and easy.
We’re going to jump right in,
I’m going to show you the very first way
to be able to figure out what version
of the Windows Operating System you’re running.
If you’re not already familiar with Windows Server,
we have this tool called the Server Manager.
It tells you all the different things
that are going on with the server,
it’s kind of a central command post
where you can do a lot of different things, access tools,
figure out what kinds of resources are being used,
and believe it or not, if you didn’t know,
tell what version of the operating system you’re running.
Now, you can’t use Server Manager on Windows 10 and Windows 11,
but all the other version of this
that I’m going to show you will work the same way there.
So, if you want to get to Server Manager
and it’s not already open, you go down to the Start menu,
right down here at the bottom, the Windows flag,
and you can see right up here,
it’s going to be this tile pegged
in the upper left hand corner under Windows Server.
If you’re like me, you may close this tool
whenever you’re working with the server
after you get done with it,
and you have to come back in and open it up,
so it’s good to know where to find it.
I’ve already got it open down here,
so I’m just going to go ahead and bring it open,
pretend we clicked on it,
and when we do, you’re normally going to see
this view right here, the Dashboard.
It kind of gives you an all-up view
of what’s going on with the server,
the health status, things like that.
But if we come right down below the Dashboard
where it says Local Server,
we’re going to see all the information specific to this machine,
the machine we’re actually running on.
And underneath the Properties area,
the big, white, rectangular area right
at the top in the middle of the screen there,
as we come down,
we’ll just zoom in so you can see this,
we’ve things like Computer Name,
whether we’re in a Workgroup
and what that Workgroup is called, things like that.
But you’ll noticed right down
at the bottom on the left hand side
it says Operating System Version, you can see right there,
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Evaluation.
That’s the current version of the operating system I’m running,
and we can even tell that we’re running this as a virtual machine.
So, the first way to do this, we use Server Manager,
and we go in and we look under the Local Server area,
and we see under Properties
that we can find the version of the operating system.
I’m going to minimize that.
Our second way to do this is going to be to be able to go in,
let’s just right click on that Start menu,
because I’m going to bring up a command line
to show you another way to do this.
Now, I can go and do this a couple of ways,
but I’m just going to use PowerShell to do this,
it will run in the Windows Command line, same exact way,
but I want to run this as an administrator,
and we happen to have a shortcut for PowerShell
as an administrator right from the Run line,
so it’s easy enough,
or right from the Start menu, rather,
so it’s easy enough to be able to do that.
So, I’m going to bring that up,
and it’s going to come up, very simple,
I’m going to type in systeminfo,
short for system information,
and when I type in systeminfo,
you can see the command right there,
I don’t have to type .exe,
it’s understood and implied in PowerShell
that’s it’s an executable,
but I can type that in, too, if I wanted to.
When I hit that, it’s going to take a moment,
so be patient with it, it’s going to tell you it’s processing,
finding a bunch of information,
and then we’ll just go up to the top here
so you can see that,
as soon as I do that,
right at the very top of all that information that comes out,
second and third items right there,
it says Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Datacenter,
it kind of trails off, Evaluation
and it actually gives me the build number,
it tells me the actual reference number
that Microsoft uses for the versioning.
This would be way number two, our second way,
along with, of course, a bunch of additional information.
Alright, so we’re going to minimize that.
Now, if you’re kind of an old school user of Windows,
you’ve been doing this a while,
you’re used to perhaps older version of the operating system,
going maybe all the way back even as far back
as Windows NT, Windows 7, Windows 2000,
all the way up to the modern versions we’re talking about,
then you might be more familiar
with doing something like the following.
We can go in, let’s just do this right from here,
we can go to our Settings icon
and I’m going to go to Settings right there from our Start menu,
and with Settings we can go into different areas of the system,
this would be the Control Panel
and all the icons associated with different actual areas,
and I’m going to go right up here to System,
upper left hand corner.
When I click on that,
I can get to this information a couple of ways.
In the older versions of the operating system
you’d have to go to a different place to find this,
and I’m going to show you
what that looks in just a moment,
but starting with Server 2012 and certainly 2016 going forward,
I can go to Settings, I can some to System,
I can go right down to the bottom here
and I can click on About,
let me just zoom in so you could see that,
right down there, under Remote Desktop.
And when I click on About,
I’m going to go all the way to the bottom here,
so, under Device Specifications,
and I’ll see Windows Specifications, right there,
and I can see yet another way to figure out
what edition or version I’m running,
again, Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Evaluation.
So this would be our third way
that we can do this, right from here.
Now, as I’ve mentioned,
if you’re really used to using Windows
and using it for a while and using it with older versions,
then you’re probably more familiar
with doing something like this, let me just open this up.
What you’re probably used to is coming in
and going to your computer,
so you go to This PC,
and what you can do is do a couple of things.
If you go to Manage it’s going to take you right back
to the Server Manager,
just to show you that you can actually get to that
from multiple places.
We’ve already seen how to do this from there.
What I can also do back here is I can go in
and I can go to Properties, right click on the computer.
so This PC, right here, just zoom in
so you could see that before I bring it back up.
Go to Properties from our pop out menu,
and I just had that up, so we’ll bring it back,
and this brings up the older view from the Windows Control Panel
that you’re probably used to seeing
under System Security in System,
that’s where a lot of us would probably be familiar
with finding the version information,
and you will see right here
it also tells me Windows edition,
Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Evaluation.
That’s our fourth way that we can do this.
We can do it there.
I’ve got a fifth way for you, as well,
one that you may or may not be familiar with.
I’m going to show you
down on the right hand corner of my machine screen,
that I have this little white graphic that tells me,
yes, I’m running Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Eval,
I’ve got so many days left on the evaluation,
it tells me the build and release information,
but that’s not there
by default in most Windows operating systems,
you have to be able to figure out how to put it there.
The way it gets there is by running a special tool,
it’s available for free,
you can download it directly from Microsoft,
it’s actually a Microsoft tool, it’s called BGinfo,
and those of you again that have been doing this a while
are probably familiar with BGinfo,
you may remember it,
you may even use it to be able to profile your machines
and put that information on the desktop,
so your support professionals can easily tell
what version of the operating system is running
when they remote in or go to service a machine.
And so you can get a copy of BGinfo,
whatever the most recent version is,
simply by going to the URL that’s on the screen,
it’s going to be in the notes for you
when you’re watching this particular episode,
and you can easily go and download it,
follow the instruction and install it.
Really straightforward.
What you will see, and it’s free, by the way,
what you’ll see is that it potentially will give you
not just the information I have there,
but actually profile and put out a whole bunch of information,
and you get to choose exactly what’s there,
the screen capture shows Windows Vista running,
which is certainly an old operating system,
but you get the general idea.
And so there’s at least five different ways
that we can show the version of the operating system
and see how to not only figure out what it is,
but depending on what your needs are,
how you want to go about getting that information,
easily get it, and even communicate to others
and make it available for anybody
who sits down at the machine so they can see it
without even having to type or search for it.
I will be back with additional ways
so that you can understand
how to optimize your Windows experience
across Server 2016, 2019, and 2022.
But until then, I wish you happy windowing,
and I’ll see you soon.