How do I find the install time and date of Windows?

Question

This might sound like a little bit of a crazy question, but how can I find out (hopefully via an API/registry key) the install time and date of Windows?

The best I c

Answer 1

After trying a variety of methods, I figured that the NTFS volume creation time of the system volume is probably the best proxy. While there are tools to check this (see this link ) I wanted a method without an additional utility. I settled on the creation date of "C:\System Volume Information" and it seemed to check out in various cases.

One-line of PowerShell to get it is:

([DateTime](Get-Item -Force 'C:\System Volume Information\').CreationTime).ToString('MM/dd/yyyy')