How can I detect Windows 8.1 in a Desktop application

Question

In the Windows 8.1 preview Environment.OSVersion.Version returns the same version numbers as Windows 8. Is there alternative way of detecting Windows 8.1.

Answer 1

I'm not sure that you will want to go this deep but it is easily possibly to get exact operating system version through a simple WMI query call as described below. I've mentioned a method which you can plug directly in your code to get the exact operating system version. Required namespaces to be imported for this C# code snippet have been mentioned just above the function :

using System;
using System.Management;
private string GetOsVersion()
{
        var sccmManagementScope = new ManagementScope(@"\\" + System.Environment.MachineName + @"\root\cimv2");
        var searchResult = new ManagementObjectSearcher(sccmManagementScope, new WqlObjectQuery("SELECT Version FROM Win32_OperatingSystem"));
        var resultSet = searchResult.Get();
        var osVersion = string.Empty;
        foreach (ManagementObject managementObject in resultSet)
        {
            osVersion = Convert.ToString(managementObject["Version"]);
        }
        return osVersion;
    }

Though I still strongly believe that System.Environment.OSVersion.Version should be able to meet most of your needs unless you have something very specific in regards to target Windows 8.1. In fact I used the same trick for one of requirements as System.Environment class actually lies about the OS version if your application is not manifested for Windows 8.1 operating system.