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Old December 2nd 17, 05:33 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Posts: 10,881
Default 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.
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