T news 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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