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T December 2nd 17 05:05 AM

tip: when was windows installed
 
Hi All,

My tip for the week. :-)

A customer wanted to know how old his computer was. He thought
maybe four years. So I look for when Windows was installed.
It was over sever years. Chuckle.


When was Windows installed:

systeminfo | find /i "original"


-T

VanguardLH[_2_] December 2nd 17 05:33 AM

tip: when was windows installed
 
T wrote:

A customer wanted to know how old his computer was. He thought
maybe four years. So I look for when Windows was installed.
It was over sever years. Chuckle.

When was Windows installed:

systeminfo | find /i "original"


Only works if you never give up resolving a problem that a fresh OS
install will fix quicker. At some point in troubleshooting a problem,
you have to learn to give up looking for a fix. Often there is a need
for usability of the hardware so you cannot indefinitely work on trying
to resolve a problem. After languishing on the workbench trying to fix
a problem, give up, save an image, do a fresh OS install, and test if
the problem is gone. If not, restore the image and work on it some
more. If gone, you don't waste more time on a fruitless endeavor.

My home PC is a salvaged Acer box dating back to 2009 and it came with
an OEM version of Windows 7. Back then Microsoft was providing backup
images for Win7 so I wiped the drive during the install and used the
product key (from the current install, not the volume sysprep key on the
case sticker) to do a fresh install. I just ran the above command and
it says the install date was 4/12/2016. Well, that's a few years after
I salvaged the hardware and software (11/13/2013 according to Newegg's
records of hardware I bought there to replace the defective parts) which
was several years after the original owner purchased the box when it was
already out about a year. ~2009 for the computer, 2013 to salvage it
and a fresh install of Windows, 2016 for another fresh install of
Windows. The 2016 date doesn't come close to how old is the computer or
even how long that I've had it unless the granularity of your "when
bought" measurement is by a decade.

That command only gives a datestamp of when the current OS instance got
installed, not how old is the computer. The assumption is your customer
nor anyone he has ever contracted for service, including you or some
other tech, has ever performed a fresh install of the OS after the
customer bought the computer.

T December 2nd 17 06:03 AM

tip: when was windows installed
 
On 12/01/2017 08:33 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

A customer wanted to know how old his computer was. He thought
maybe four years. So I look for when Windows was installed.
It was over sever years. Chuckle.

When was Windows installed:

systeminfo | find /i "original"


Only works if you never give up resolving a problem that a fresh OS
install will fix quicker. At some point in troubleshooting a problem,
you have to learn to give up looking for a fix. Often there is a need
for usability of the hardware so you cannot indefinitely work on trying
to resolve a problem. After languishing on the workbench trying to fix
a problem, give up, save an image, do a fresh OS install, and test if
the problem is gone. If not, restore the image and work on it some
more. If gone, you don't waste more time on a fruitless endeavor.

My home PC is a salvaged Acer box dating back to 2009 and it came with
an OEM version of Windows 7. Back then Microsoft was providing backup
images for Win7 so I wiped the drive during the install and used the
product key (from the current install, not the volume sysprep key on the
case sticker) to do a fresh install. I just ran the above command and
it says the install date was 4/12/2016. Well, that's a few years after
I salvaged the hardware and software (11/13/2013 according to Newegg's
records of hardware I bought there to replace the defective parts) which
was several years after the original owner purchased the box when it was
already out about a year. ~2009 for the computer, 2013 to salvage it
and a fresh install of Windows, 2016 for another fresh install of
Windows. The 2016 date doesn't come close to how old is the computer or
even how long that I've had it unless the granularity of your "when
bought" measurement is by a decade.

That command only gives a datestamp of when the current OS instance got
installed, not how old is the computer. The assumption is your customer
nor anyone he has ever contracted for service, including you or some
other tech, has ever performed a fresh install of the OS after the
customer bought the computer.


All true. But those that know how to do what you describe
always know specifics about their computers.

My tip works great on those the buy and computer and barely
know how to use it. And the computer can never be younger
than the OS install date (unless it was cloned).

I had to chuckle at a customer that always though her computers
were 1/3 as old as they were. So I kept a spreadsheet and sent
it to her. She started keeping it up herself. And no longer
complained about why a 2 year old computer need to be replaced
after only 7 years.

:-)



J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_] December 2nd 17 07:01 AM

tip: when was windows installed
 
In message , T writes:
On 12/01/2017 08:33 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

A customer wanted to know how old his computer was. He thought
maybe four years. So I look for when Windows was installed.
It was over sever years. Chuckle.

When was Windows installed:

systeminfo | find /i "original"

Only works if you never give up resolving a problem that a fresh OS
install will fix quicker. At some point in troubleshooting a problem,

[]
I had to chuckle at a customer that always though her computers
were 1/3 as old as they were. So I kept a spreadsheet and sent
it to her. She started keeping it up herself. And no longer
complained about why a 2 year old computer need to be replaced
after only 7 years.

:-)


Can modern motherboards, processors, disc drives, or other such
components be interrogated for a date - to within a couple of years,
anyway? (I don't know, I'm asking.) Video cards will probably show one
for a second or two when the computer starts, though that'd be the date
of its firmware, not the actual hardware, but again that ought to be
within a couple of years I'd have thought.

(If components can only be interrogated for serial number, there might
be databases somewhere online that lost serial numbers by date. I think
disc drives at least can be interrogated for these.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

But remember, in a permissive society, it is also permissible to stay at home
and have a nice cup of tea instead. Andrew Collins, RT 2015/2/14-20

T December 2nd 17 07:24 AM

tip: when was windows installed
 
On 12/01/2017 10:01 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , T writes:
On 12/01/2017 08:33 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

A customer wanted to know how old his computer was.Â* He thought
maybe four years.Â* So I look for when Windows was installed.
It was over sever years.Â* Chuckle.

When was Windows installed:

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* systeminfo | find /i "original"
Â*Only works if you never give up resolving a problem that a fresh OS
install will fix quicker.Â* At some point in troubleshooting a problem,

[]
I had to chuckle at a customer that always though her computers
were 1/3 as old as they were.Â* So I kept a spreadsheet and sent
it to her.Â* She started keeping it up herself.Â* And no longer
complained about why a 2 year old computer need to be replaced
after only 7 years.

:-)


Can modern motherboards, processors, disc drives, or other such
components be interrogated for a date - to within a couple of years,
anyway? (I don't know, I'm asking.) Video cards will probably show one
for a second or two when the computer starts, though that'd be the date
of its firmware, not the actual hardware, but again that ought to be
within a couple of years I'd have thought.

(If components can only be interrogated for serial number, there might
be databases somewhere online that lost serial numbers by date. I think
disc drives at least can be interrogated for these.)



I have seen it on Dell motherboards using one of their utilities.
They called it Birth Date or some such.

I don't see it show up on dmidecode (a Linux tool for system
information). It does give you the BIOS date, which is a
crude guess.

# dmidecode 3.1
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 2.7 present.
78 structures occupying 3132 bytes.
Table at 0x000EBFE0.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
Version: 2.00
Release Date: 05/09/2014
Address: 0xF0000
Runtime Size: 64 kB
ROM Size: 16 MB
Characteristics:
PCI is supported
BIOS is upgradeable
BIOS shadowing is allowed
Boot from CD is supported
Selectable boot is supported
BIOS ROM is socketed
EDD is supported
5.25"/1.2 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
3.5"/2.88 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
Serial services are supported (int 14h)
Printer services are supported (int 17h)
ACPI is supported
USB legacy is supported
BIOS boot specification is supported
Targeted content distribution is supported
UEFI is supported
BIOS Revision: 4.6



Paul[_32_] December 2nd 17 12:43 PM

tip: when was windows installed
 
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , T writes:
On 12/01/2017 08:33 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

A customer wanted to know how old his computer was. He thought
maybe four years. So I look for when Windows was installed.
It was over sever years. Chuckle.

When was Windows installed:

systeminfo | find /i "original"
Only works if you never give up resolving a problem that a fresh OS
install will fix quicker. At some point in troubleshooting a problem,

[]
I had to chuckle at a customer that always though her computers
were 1/3 as old as they were. So I kept a spreadsheet and sent
it to her. She started keeping it up herself. And no longer
complained about why a 2 year old computer need to be replaced
after only 7 years.

:-)


Can modern motherboards, processors, disc drives, or other such
components be interrogated for a date - to within a couple of years,
anyway? (I don't know, I'm asking.) Video cards will probably show one
for a second or two when the computer starts, though that'd be the date
of its firmware, not the actual hardware, but again that ought to be
within a couple of years I'd have thought.

(If components can only be interrogated for serial number, there might
be databases somewhere online that lost serial numbers by date. I think
disc drives at least can be interrogated for these.)


Silicon chips have a date code on top. It gives year and week.
That gives you a ballpark figure (approximate year).

Asus motherboards, the first two characters of the serial number
encode year and month. The warranty is measured from the birth
date, not the date on the sales slip. I have an Asus motherboard
here, which was sitting on a shop shelf for two years, leaving
only one year of warranty coverage left, out of a claimed
three year warranty.

The warranty can't be more than three years, because if the
product sat on the shelf, the CMOS battery would be dead. And
they'd have to mail out new batteries to people.

I haven't really run into info for other brands of
motherboards, and whether there is a reliable indicator.
BIOS codes could be flash upgraded, so if you're buying
used, you wouldn't really know when the motherboard
came out just looking at a BIOS date. I usually look
for review articles, to get some idea which century
stuff was made in. That gives an idea of the epoch.

As for the command T uses above, I was surprised to
learn my OS has a "find" command and a "findstr"
command, which perform the same function, but
have different available options. These are
similar to "grep". Weird, that they provide two
utilities like that.

Paul

Ken Blake[_5_] December 2nd 17 08:52 PM

tip: when was windows installed
 
On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 22:33:25 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:


T wrote:


A customer wanted to know how old his computer was. He thought
maybe four years. So I look for when Windows was installed.
It was over sever years. Chuckle.

When was Windows installed:

systeminfo | find /i "original"


Only works if you never give up resolving a problem that a fresh OS
install will fix quicker.



...or if you never do a clean installation of a different version of
Windows.

Char Jackson December 2nd 17 09:10 PM

tip: when was windows installed
 
On Sat, 02 Dec 2017 06:43:38 -0500, Paul wrote:

As for the command T uses above, I was surprised to
learn my OS has a "find" command and a "findstr"
command, which perform the same function, but
have different available options. These are
similar to "grep". Weird, that they provide two
utilities like that.


I've been using "find" for at least 10 years to get a quick list of my
current IP addresses. I travel for work, so things change every time I
set up at a customer site or stay at a hotel.

C:\Windows\System32ipconfig | find "IPv4"
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.111.210
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.31.1
Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.134.50
Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.1.190

***

C:\Windows\System32find /?
Searches for a text string in a file or files.

FIND [/V] [/C] [/N] [/i] [/OFF[LINE]] "string" [[drive:][path]filename[
....]]

/V Displays all lines NOT containing the specified string.
/C Displays only the count of lines containing the string.
/N Displays line numbers with the displayed lines.
/I Ignores the case of characters when searching for the string.
/OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
"string" Specifies the text string to find.
[drive:][path]filename
Specifies a file or files to search.

If a path is not specified, FIND searches the text typed at the prompt
or piped from another command.

***

C:\Windows\System32findstr /?
Searches for strings in files.

FINDSTR [/b] [/E] [/L] [/R] [/S] [/i] [/X] [/V] [/N] [/M] [/O] [/P]
[/F:file]
[/C:string] [/G:file] [/D:dir list] [/A:color attributes]
[/OFF[LINE]]
strings [[drive:][path]filename[ ...]]

/B Matches pattern if at the beginning of a line.
/E Matches pattern if at the end of a line.
/L Uses search strings literally.
/R Uses search strings as regular expressions.
/S Searches for matching files in the current directory and
all subdirectories.
/I Specifies that the search is not to be case-sensitive.
/X Prints lines that match exactly.
/V Prints only lines that do not contain a match.
/N Prints the line number before each line that matches.
/M Prints only the filename if a file contains a match.
/O Prints character offset before each matching line.
/P Skip files with non-printable characters.
/OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
/A:attr Specifies color attribute with two hex digits. See "color
/?"
/F:file Reads file list from the specified file(/ stands for
console).
/C:string Uses specified string as a literal search string.
/G:file Gets search strings from the specified file(/ stands for
console).
/D:dir Search a semicolon delimited list of directories
strings Text to be searched for.
[drive:][path]filename
Specifies a file or files to search.

Use spaces to separate multiple search strings unless the argument is
prefixed
with /C. For example, 'FINDSTR "hello there" x.y' searches for "hello"
or
"there" in file x.y. 'FINDSTR /C:"hello there" x.y' searches for
"hello there" in file x.y.

Regular expression quick reference:
. Wildcard: any character
* Repeat: zero or more occurrences of previous character or
class
^ Line position: beginning of line
$ Line position: end of line
[class] Character class: any one character in set
[^class] Inverse class: any one character not in set
[x-y] Range: any characters within the specified range
\x Escape: literal use of metacharacter x
\xyz Word position: beginning of word
xyz\ Word position: end of word

For full information on FINDSTR regular expressions refer to the online
Command
Reference.

C:\Windows\System32


--

Char Jackson

VanguardLH[_2_] December 2nd 17 09:51 PM

tip: when was windows installed
 
Ken Blake wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

T wrote:

A customer wanted to know how old his computer was. He thought
maybe four years. So I look for when Windows was installed.
It was over sever years. Chuckle.

When was Windows installed:

systeminfo | find /i "original"


Only works if you never give up resolving a problem that a fresh OS
install will fix quicker.


...or if you never do a clean installation of a different version of
Windows.


I never upgrade (which is really a migrate) to a new Windows version.
During the installation, I elect to have the installer wipe the old OS
partition, or I do the wipe if Microsoft's installer won't do what I
want for partitioning (like using 1 partition instead of 2, as the
installer will not step on current partitioning and use the 1
partition). Beforehand, I've already done an image backup of the OS
partition, stored all my data files elsewhere, and often wander through
the programs checking for any tweaks or config changes that I've made.
I've found upgrades are polluted with unrelated old crap (not usable
under the new OS) or the old state inflicts problems in the new OS.

Although I did the Windows 10 upgrade (only to get the image and the
product key recorded into my Microsoft account), and if and when I move
to Windows 10, it will also be a fresh install. I did the upgrade and
saved that image so I could start from there when going to Windows 10.
Or I could use the installer (for the latest release) and have it get
the product key from my Microsoft account to do a fresh install (the
more likely scenario).

Fresh installs take longer than upgrades unless, of course, there were
problems or pollution in the old OS that migrate to the new OS. Usually
takes me an evening to do the fresh OS install and several following
evenings to install fresh copies of the applications and do their
tweaking. The data is trivial to restore.

Ammammata December 4th 17 09:44 AM

tip: when was windows installed
 
Il giorno Sat 02 Dec 2017 05:05:47a, *T* ha inviato su alt.windows7.general
il messaggio . Vediamo cosa ha scritto:


systeminfo | find /i "original"



Original Install Date: 14/03/2011, 16:11:22

--
/-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ T /-\
-=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- - -=-
http://www.bb2002.it :)

............ [ al lavoro ] ...........

Ammammata December 4th 17 09:49 AM

tip: when was windows installed
 
Il giorno Sat 02 Dec 2017 05:33:25a, *VanguardLH* ha inviato su
alt.windows7.general il messaggio .
Vediamo cosa ha scritto:

Back then Microsoft was providing backup
images for Win7 so I wiped the drive during the install and used the
product key (from the current install, not the volume sysprep key on the
case sticker) to do a fresh install.


same thing I did. A fresh install, with just those things I needed, meant 6
years (and counting) of perfectly working system

actually I ran the W10 update, just to "register" my product key for future
use, then I reverted back to Seven :)

recently I replaced the HDD with an SSD, cloning the whole system :)

--
/-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ T /-\
-=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- - -=-
http://www.bb2002.it :)

............ [ al lavoro ] ...........

Diesel December 16th 17 06:34 PM

tip: when was windows installed
 
T Sat, 02 Dec
2017 05:03:32 GMT in alt.windows7.general, wrote:

On 12/01/2017 08:33 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

A customer wanted to know how old his computer was. He thought
maybe four years. So I look for when Windows was installed.
It was over sever years. Chuckle.

When was Windows installed:

systeminfo | find /i "original"


Only works if you never give up resolving a problem that a fresh
OS install will fix quicker. At some point in troubleshooting a
problem, you have to learn to give up looking for a fix. Often
there is a need for usability of the hardware so you cannot
indefinitely work on trying to resolve a problem. After
languishing on the workbench trying to fix a problem, give up,
save an image, do a fresh OS install, and test if the problem is
gone. If not, restore the image and work on it some more. If
gone, you don't waste more time on a fruitless endeavor.

My home PC is a salvaged Acer box dating back to 2009 and it came
with an OEM version of Windows 7. Back then Microsoft was
providing backup images for Win7 so I wiped the drive during the
install and used the product key (from the current install, not
the volume sysprep key on the case sticker) to do a fresh
install. I just ran the above command and it says the install
date was 4/12/2016. Well, that's a few years after I salvaged
the hardware and software (11/13/2013 according to Newegg's
records of hardware I bought there to replace the defective
parts) which was several years after the original owner purchased
the box when it was already out about a year. ~2009 for the
computer, 2013 to salvage it and a fresh install of Windows, 2016
for another fresh install of Windows. The 2016 date doesn't come
close to how old is the computer or even how long that I've had
it unless the granularity of your "when bought" measurement is by
a decade.

That command only gives a datestamp of when the current OS
instance got installed, not how old is the computer. The
assumption is your customer nor anyone he has ever contracted for
service, including you or some other tech, has ever performed a
fresh install of the OS after the customer bought the computer.


All true. But those that know how to do what you describe
always know specifics about their computers.

My tip works great on those the buy and computer and barely
know how to use it. And the computer can never be younger
than the OS install date (unless it was cloned).

I had to chuckle at a customer that always though her computers
were 1/3 as old as they were. So I kept a spreadsheet and sent
it to her. She started keeping it up herself. And no longer
complained about why a 2 year old computer need to be replaced
after only 7 years.

:-)




Another option for determining possible age of a computer is to
checkout the BIOS firmware date [g] If the computer is only two years
old, it's bios won't be reporting copyrights for it's firmware years
prior. It'll be more uptodate.


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