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#1
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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 |
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#2
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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. |
#3
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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. :-) |
#4
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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 |
#5
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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 |
#6
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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 |
#7
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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. |
#8
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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 |
#9
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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. |
#10
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tip: when was windows installed
Il giorno Sat 02 Dec 2017 05:05:47a, *T* ha inviato su alt.windows7.general
il messaggio news systeminfo | find /i "original" Original Install Date: 14/03/2011, 16:11:22 -- /-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ T /-\ -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- - -=- http://www.bb2002.it ............ [ al lavoro ] ........... |
#11
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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 ] ........... |
#12
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tip: when was windows installed
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. -- Please visit our moderators personal page: https://tekrider.net/pages/david-brooks-stalker.php Now for a cheeky message from our sponsors: Death is an illusion. Life is a hallucination. Taxes are objective reality. |
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