[Tip] How to Find Out the Date and Time When Windows was Installed in Your Computer?

Here is an interesting tip for our readers! Recently an AskVG reader “Arif034” asked us following question via email:

How can I find out the exact install time and date of Windows? I’ve come across some answers to this query but all of them require juggling with registry or CMD and as a below average user, I’m not at all comfortable with that. Can you please provide me an easy solution? Thank you.

There might be situations when you may need to determine the installation date and time of Windows OS in your computer system. Sometimes you may want to know out of curiosity when did you last install Windows?

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There are many ways to check Windows installation date and time as mentioned below:

  • METHOD 1: Using Windows Explorer
  • METHOD 2: Using SystemInfo Command in Command Prompt
  • METHOD 3: Using WMIC Command in Command Prompt
  • METHOD 4: Using Registry Editor

If you also want to find out install date and time of Windows in your system, here are the details of these methods:

METHOD 1: Using Windows Explorer

This method is the easiest method to have an approximate idea of date and time of Windows installation.

1. Open Windows Explorer and go to the drive containing the installed operating system. Generally its C: drive in most of the systems.

2. Now either change the folder view type to details or right-click on a folder such as Program Files or Windows and select Properties.

Windows_Folders_Creation_Date_Time.png

3. It’ll open folder properties window. Here you can see the folder created date and time. Its almost the same date and time when Windows was installed in your computer.

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But there is a slight problem in this method. Since Windows Vista release, Microsoft changed the installation type of Windows to image based which means the setup installer just extracts the required files to your hard drive. So many times the date and time of folder creation will not be the installation date and time of Windows but it’ll be the date and time when Microsoft created the Windows image for the setup.

But there is a workaround for this problem! You can check out the folder creation date of your user account folder which is present in “Documents and Settings” or “Users” folder.

User_Folder_Creation_Date_Time.png

Since this folder is created by Windows setup at the time of installation, its creation date and time will be almost the same as of Windows installation.

METHOD 2: Using SystemInfo Command in Command Prompt

The above mentioned method might not provide the exact and correct date and time of Windows installation but you can use following Command Prompt method to get the original date and time when Windows was installed:

1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator using any method given here.

2. Now run following command:

systeminfo

It’ll take a few seconds in running some tests and you’ll get a detailed information in the result.

3. Scroll upwards a little and look for “Original Install Date” section. It’ll show the correct date and time of Windows installation in your system.

Windows_Install_Date_Time_Command_Prompt.png

You can also take help of ‘|‘ parameter to direct find and show the Windows installation date and time via systeminfo command.

Just run following command in Command Prompt:

systeminfo | find /i “date”

Windows_Install_Date_Time_SystemInfo.png

It’ll only show the Windows installation date and time information.

METHOD 3: Using WMIC Command in Command Prompt

There is another command “WMIC” (Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line) which can be used to find out Windows installation date and time.

1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator using any method given here.

2. Now run following command:

WMIC OS GET installdate

It’ll immediately show the install date and time of Windows in following format:

Year Month Date Hour Minutes Seconds

Windows_Install_Date_Time_WMIC.png

For example following is the result of the above mentioned command in our test:

20131019011658

Here:

2013(year) 10(month) 19(date) 01(hour) 16(minutes) 58(seconds)

METHOD 4: Using Registry Editor

You can also take help of Windows Registry to find out the date and time of Windows installation but it’ll be little bit complicated method.

Interested people can follow these steps to check the install date and time of Windows in Registry Editor:

1. Type regedit in RUN dialog box and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

3. In right-side pane, look for InstallDate DWORD value.

Windows_Install_Date_Time_Registry_Editor.png

4. This DWORD contains total number of seconds since 1st January 1970. You’ll need to perform some mathematics calculations to find out the date and time information from the given number of seconds.

That’s it. If you know about any other method to calculate or find Windows installation date and time, feel free to share it in your comment…

Also Check:

How to Check Which Windows Version is Installed in My Computer?

How to Show Day and Month Names in System Tray Date in Windows 7

How to Show AM / PM Symbols in System Tray Clock in Windows 7

Published in: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

  1. There is a software called belarc advisor which gives detailed information about hardware and software of computer
    Its a freeware and compitable with all windows os and its very easy to use belarc.com/en/free_download.html

  2. Thanks VG. I like the command prompt version you mentioned (systeminfo | find /i “date”). Simple and fast!

  3. VG r u a mind reader??

    Yesterday night I wanted to know the exact installation time of my OS but it was very late so i postpone it for today and boom..

    Now today I’ve blessed with the answer 🙂

    Thanks VG for verious methods.

  4. thanks VG, your solution really helped me a lot, thanks

    for me the systeminfo method is the easiest, no extra soft or anything crap nit needed & it shows the exact info in a sec 🙂

  5. Or just download a program called Speccy, it’s by Piriform (makers of CCleaner, the best cleaner I can agree)

  6. this tip applies if u have not installed 8.1 in ur system,if your system was updated to windows 8.1 then its show the day and date when i installed 8.1

  7. We can also get the approx. date of installation by looking at programs installed. If we arrange them as per date installed. Any software will be installed only after OS is installed.

  8. The November, 2015 update to Windows 10 changed the recorded install date to the date the update was applied. This wipes out the real Windows 10 install date. The approximate real Windows install date can be recovered by looking in the Windows System folder. The earliest file dates will be the install date. I don’t know why they did not record the install and update times separately.

  9. dear VG,
    i bought laptop in 2010. how many times the windows os is installed from 2010 to this time.how to know this ?

  10. Using DiskManagement, you could use the date you formatted the disc? Oke not fool proof but still a nice indicator.

    For Windows 7 systems. The first installation date will be overwritten when you install SP1 manually. However the USERS and PerfLogs folder stay intact.

  11. Here is a simple batch(.bat) script file:

    @ECHO OFF
    ECHO Windows Install Date
    ECHO.
    systeminfo | find /i “date”
    ECHO.
    ECHO.
    ECHO Windows System Information
    systeminfo
    ECHO.
    ECHO Done…
    :finish
    ECHO.
    ECHO Press any key to exit.
    PAUSE > NUL

  12. The date on the Windows folder doesn’t necessarily tell when it was installed. My Windows 7 folder has a date of July 13th, 2009, but i actually installed it on August 23rd 2019

  13. Method 2 is not correct: it doesn’t show the original date when the OS was first time installed to this computer.

    For me it shows 12/2019 but I got this computer 05/2017. Originally it was already then Win10, and I don’t exactly know why method 2 shows a later date, maybe it changed after a bigger update for Win10?

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