Venky's World

     

     

    Get Operating System Version


    The Api used for this are

     

    Private Declare Function GetVersionEx Lib "kernel32" Alias "GetVersionExA" (lpVersionInformation As OSVERSIONINFO) As Long
     

    Private Type OSVERSIONINFO
    dwOSVersionInfoSize As Long
    dwMajorVersion As Long
    dwMinorVersion As Long
    dwBuildNumber As Long
    dwPlatformId As Long
    szCSDVersion As String * 128 ' Maintenance string for PSS usage
    End Type

    The GetVersion Api just takes one parameter of type OSVERSIONINFO. The OSVERSIONINFO structure will contain all the details about the OS after GetVersionApi has been successfully executed. The parameters of  OSVERSIONINFO are 

    • dwMajorVersion which gives info about the major version of the OS .This value is  3 for win Nt 3.51, 4 for win95/98/me and win nt4 and it is 5 for win2k.
    • dwMinorVersion ,another parameter to differentiate the OS further .It is 0 for win 95,10 for win 98 ,98 for win ME,0   for win2k ,0 for win nt4 and 51 for win nt 3.51
    • dwPlatformId  .This is an important parameter which helps in further differentiating the varios win OS.It is 1 for win 95/ 98/ME ,and 2 for win NT  

    Once Declared we can use this in the following way

    Dim os As OSVERSIONINFO 


    os.dwOSVersionInfoSize = Len(os)     'Assign some size to store the received information

    Dim m As Long
    Dim mv As Long
    Dim pd As Long
    Dim miv As Long
    m = GetVersionEx(os)        'The actual API call to GetVersionEx
    mv = os.dwMajorVersion
    pd = os.dwPlatformId
    miv = os.dwMinorVersion
    If pd = 2 Then MsgBox " OS is Windows NT" & mv & "." & miv
    If pd = 1 Then
    If miv = 10 Then MsgBox " OS is Windows 98 "
    If miv = 0 Then MsgBox " OS is Windows 95 "
    If miv = 90 Then MsgBox " OS is Windows ME "
    End If


     

    This can be quite useful if you are making OS specific Applications.