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How to find the Windows version from the PowerShell command line

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How can I tell what version of Windows from command prompt?

How to check what Windows version you have by running the winver command. Press the Windows + R keyboard keys to launch the Run window, type winver, and press Enter. Open Terminal, Command Prompt (CMD), or PowerShell, type winver, and press Enter. You can also use the search feature to open winver.

How do I identify Windows version?

Click the Start or Windows button (usually in the lower-left corner of your computer screen). Right-click Computer and choose Properties from the menu. The resulting screen shows the Windows version.


Since you have access to the .NET library, you could access the OSVersion property of the System.Environment class to get this information. For the version number, there is the Version property.

For example,

PS C:\> [System.Environment]::OSVersion.Version

Major  Minor  Build  Revision
-----  -----  -----  --------
6      1      7601   65536

Details of Windows versions can be found here.


  1. To get the Windows version number, as Jeff notes in his answer, use:

    [Environment]::OSVersion
    

    It is worth noting that the result is of type [System.Version], so it is possible to check for, say, Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 and later with

    [Environment]::OSVersion.Version -ge (new-object 'Version' 6,1)
    

    However this will not tell you if it is client or server Windows, nor the name of the version.

  2. Use WMI's Win32_OperatingSystem class (always single instance), for example:

    (Get-WmiObject -class Win32_OperatingSystem).Caption
    

    will return something like

    Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 Standard


Unfortunately most of the other answers do not provide information specific to Windows 10.

Windows 10 has versions of its own: 1507, 1511, 1607, 1703, etc. This is what winver shows.

Powershell:
(Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion").ReleaseId

Command prompt (CMD.EXE):
Reg Query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion" /v ReleaseId

See also related question on superuser.

As for other Windows versions use systeminfo. Powershell wrapper:

PS C:\> systeminfo /fo csv | ConvertFrom-Csv | select OS*, System*, Hotfix* | Format-List


OS Name             : Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise
OS Version          : 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
OS Manufacturer     : Microsoft Corporation
OS Configuration    : Standalone Workstation
OS Build Type       : Multiprocessor Free
System Type         : x64-based PC
System Locale       : ru;Russian
Hotfix(s)           : 274 Hotfix(s) Installed.,[01]: KB2849697,[02]: KB2849697,[03]:...

Windows 10 output for the same command:

OS Name             : Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise N 2016 LTSB
OS Version          : 10.0.14393 N/A Build 14393
OS Manufacturer     : Microsoft Corporation
OS Configuration    : Standalone Workstation
OS Build Type       : Multiprocessor Free
System Type         : x64-based PC
System Directory    : C:\Windows\system32
System Locale       : en-us;English (United States)
Hotfix(s)           : N/A

Get-ComputerInfo | select WindowsProductName, WindowsVersion, OsHardwareAbstractionLayer

returns

WindowsProductName    WindowsVersion OsHardwareAbstractionLayer
------------------    -------------- --------------------------
Windows 10 Enterprise 1709           10.0.16299.371 

This will give you the full version of Windows (including Revision/Build number) unlike all the solutions above:

(Get-ItemProperty -Path c:\windows\system32\hal.dll).VersionInfo.FileVersion

Result:

10.0.10240.16392 (th1_st1.150716-1608)

Since PowerShell 5:

Get-ComputerInfo
Get-ComputerInfo -Property Windows*

I think this command pretty much tries the 1001 different ways so far discovered to collect system information...


If you want to differentiate between Windows 8.1 (6.3.9600) and Windows 8 (6.2.9200) use

(Get-CimInstance Win32_OperatingSystem).Version 

to get the proper version. [Environment]::OSVersion doesn't work properly in Windows 8.1 (it returns a Windows 8 version).