How to detect Windows 64-bit platform with .NET?

Question

In a .NET 2.0 C# application I use the following code to detect the operating system platform:

string os_platform = System.Environment.OSVersion.Platform.ToS         


        

Answer 1

Using dotPeek helps to see how the framework actually does it. With that in mind, here's what I've come up with:

public static class EnvironmentHelper
{
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
    static extern IntPtr GetCurrentProcess();

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
    static extern IntPtr GetModuleHandle(string moduleName);

    [DllImport("kernel32")]
    static extern IntPtr GetProcAddress(IntPtr hModule, string procName);

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
    static extern bool IsWow64Process(IntPtr hProcess, out bool wow64Process);

    public static bool Is64BitOperatingSystem()
    {
        // Check if this process is natively an x64 process. If it is, it will only run on x64 environments, thus, the environment must be x64.
        if (IntPtr.Size == 8)
            return true;
        // Check if this process is an x86 process running on an x64 environment.
        IntPtr moduleHandle = GetModuleHandle("kernel32");
        if (moduleHandle != IntPtr.Zero)
        {
            IntPtr processAddress = GetProcAddress(moduleHandle, "IsWow64Process");
            if (processAddress != IntPtr.Zero)
            {
                bool result;
                if (IsWow64Process(GetCurrentProcess(), out result) && result)
                    return true;
            }
        }
        // The environment must be an x86 environment.
        return false;
    }
}

Example usage:

EnvironmentHelper.Is64BitOperatingSystem();