Which version of Windows operating system am I running?

Find operating system info in Windows 10

To find out which version of Windows your device is running, press the Windows logo key + R, type winver in the Open box, and then select OK.

Here’s how to learn more:

Select the Start button > Settings > System > About .

Under Device specifications > System type, see if you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.

Under Windows specifications, check which edition and version of Windows your device is running.

Related links

If you’re having a problem with activation, see Activate in Windows 10.

If you forgot the password you use to sign in to Windows devices or email, see How to reset your Microsoft password.

For info about updating Windows, see Windows Update: FAQ.

Find operating system info in Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1

To find out which version of Windows your device is running, press the Windows logo key + R, type winver in the Open box, and then select OK.

If your device is running Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1, here’s how to learn more:

If you’re using a touch device, swipe in from the right edge of the screen, tap Settings, and then tap Change PC settings. Continue to step 3.

If you’re using a mouse, point to the lower-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, click Settings, and then click Change PC settings.

Select PC and devices > PC info.

Under Windows you’ll see which edition and version of Windows your device is running.

Under PC > System type you’ll see if you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.

Related links

If you’re having a problem with activation, see Activate Windows 7 or Windows 8.1

If you forgot the password you use to sign in to Windows devices or email, see How to reset your Microsoft password.

For info about updating Windows, see Windows Update: FAQ.

Find operating system info in Windows 7

Select the Start button, type Computer in the search box, right-click on Computer, and then select Properties.

Under Windows edition, you’ll see the version and edition of Windows that your device is running.

Support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020

We recommend you move to a Windows 10 PC to continue to receive security updates from Microsoft.

Related links

If you’re having a problem with activation, see Activate Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

If you forgot the password you use to sign in to Windows devices or email, see How to reset your Microsoft password.

For info about updating Windows, see Windows Update: FAQ.

Windows

Windows may refer to any of the following:

1. Microsoft Windows (also referred to as Windows or Win) is a graphical operating system developed and published by Microsoft. It provides a way to store files, run software, play games, watch videos, and connect to the Internet.

Microsoft Windows was first introduced with version 1.0 on November 10, 1983. Over a dozen versions of Windows were released after that, including the current version, Windows 10.

Editions of Windows

Starting with Windows XP, Microsoft has published various editions of Windows. Each of these Windows editions has the same core operating system, but some editions have additional features, at an additional cost.

The two most common editions of Windows for home computers are Windows Home and Windows Professional.

Windows Home

Windows Home (also called Win Home) is the basic edition of Windows. It provides all the fundamental functions of Windows, such as connecting to the Internet, browsing the web, watching videos, using office software, and playing video games. It is the least expensive edition of Windows, and it comes preinstalled on many new computers.

Windows Pro

Windows Professional (also called Windows Pro, or Win Pro) is an enhanced Windows edition, for power users, and small to medium sized businesses. It includes all the features of Windows Home, plus the following:

• Remote Desktop — allows you to remotely control another Windows computer connected to the Internet.
• Bitlocker — Microsoft’s integrated file encryption.
• Trusted Boot — provides encryption of the boot loader, protecting the computer against rootkits.
• Hyper-V — a Windows hypervisor for running virtual machines, equivalent to third-party software, such as VirtualBox.
• Windows Sandbox — provides a lightweight, sandboxed Windows 10 instance. You can use this isolated «Windows within Windows» environment to safely run suspicious or untrusted software. Windows Sandbox requires a Windows Insider build of Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise.
• Group policy management — Administrators can define group policies, for managing multiple Windows users in a business or organization.
• Support for more than 128 GB of RAM.
• Greater Windows Update installation options, including more flexible scheduling and postponement for up to 35 days.

Business editions

Windows Professional for Workstations and Windows Enterprise provide advanced features for professional studios and large businesses. For more information, refer to the side-by-side comparison in the official Microsoft Windows business edition comparison chart.

Why is Microsoft Windows called Windows?

Before the release of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft users were used to the single task command line operating system MS-DOS. Because Microsoft names most of its products with one word, it needed a word that best described its new GUI operating system. Microsoft chose «Windows» because of the multiple windows that allow different tasks and programs to run at the same time. Because you cannot trademark a common name like «Windows,» it’s officially known as «Microsoft Windows». The first version of Microsoft Windows was version 1.0, released in 1985.

Microsoft Windows help pages

Related pages

2. In general, a window is a fundamental part of a computer GUI (graphical user interface). A window is an area of the display containing a single running application. The window can be moved, resized, hidden, or maximized as desired by the user. The Microsoft Windows operating system is named after this UI element.

3. Regarding Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux or BSD, Windows may refer to the X Window System.

Microsoft Windows

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Microsoft Windows, also called Windows and Windows OS, computer operating system (OS) developed by Microsoft Corporation to run personal computers (PCs). Featuring the first graphical user interface (GUI) for IBM-compatible PCs, the Windows OS soon dominated the PC market. Approximately 90 percent of PCs run some version of Windows.

The first version of Windows, released in 1985, was simply a GUI offered as an extension of Microsoft’s existing disk operating system, or MS-DOS. Based in part on licensed concepts that Apple Inc. had used for its Macintosh System Software, Windows for the first time allowed DOS users to visually navigate a virtual desktop, opening graphical “windows” displaying the contents of electronic folders and files with the click of a mouse button, rather than typing commands and directory paths at a text prompt.

Subsequent versions introduced greater functionality, including native Windows File Manager, Program Manager, and Print Manager programs, and a more dynamic interface. Microsoft also developed specialized Windows packages, including the networkable Windows for Workgroups and the high-powered Windows NT, aimed at businesses. The 1995 consumer release Windows 95 fully integrated Windows and DOS and offered built-in Internet support, including the World Wide Web browser Internet Explorer.

With the 2001 release of Windows XP, Microsoft united its various Windows packages under a single banner, offering multiple editions for consumers, businesses, multimedia developers, and others. Windows XP abandoned the long-used Windows 95 kernel (core software code) for a more powerful code base and offered a more practical interface and improved application and memory management. The highly successful XP standard was succeeded in late 2006 by Windows Vista, which experienced a troubled rollout and met with considerable marketplace resistance, quickly acquiring a reputation for being a large, slow, and resource-consuming system. Responding to Vista’s disappointing adoption rate, Microsoft in 2009 released Windows 7, an OS whose interface was similar to that of Vista but was met with enthusiasm for its noticeable speed improvement and its modest system requirements.

Windows 8 in 2012 offered a start screen with applications appearing as tiles on a grid and the ability to synchronize settings so users could log on to another Windows 8 machine and use their preferred settings. In 2015 Microsoft released Windows 10, which came with Cortana, a digital personal assistant like Apple’s Siri, and the Web browser Microsoft Edge, which replaced Internet Explorer. Microsoft also announced that Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows, meaning that users would receive regular updates to the OS but that no more large-scale revisions would be done.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.

Microsoft’s Windows operating system

In 1985 Microsoft came out with its Windows operating system, which gave PC compatibles some of the same capabilities as the Macintosh. Year after year, Microsoft refined and improved Windows so that Apple, which failed to come up with a significant new advantage, lost its edge. IBM tried to establish yet another operating system, OS/2, but lost the battle to Gates’s company. In fact, Microsoft also had established itself as the leading provider of application software for the Macintosh. Thus Microsoft dominated not only the operating system and application software business for PC-compatibles but also the application software business for the only nonstandard system with any sizable share of the desktop computer market. In 1998, amid a growing chorus of complaints about Microsoft’s business tactics, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit charging Microsoft with using its monopoly position to stifle competition.

Workstation computers

While the personal computer market grew and matured, a variation on its theme grew out of university labs and began to threaten the minicomputers for their market. The new machines were called workstations. They looked like personal computers, and they sat on a single desktop and were used by a single individual just like personal computers, but they were distinguished by being more powerful and expensive, by having more complex architectures that spread the computational load over more than one CPU chip, by usually running the UNIX operating system, and by being targeted to scientists and engineers, software and chip designers, graphic artists, moviemakers, and others needing high performance. Workstations existed in a narrow niche between the cheapest minicomputers and the most powerful personal computers, and each year they had to become more powerful, pushing at the minicomputers even as they were pushed at by the high-end personal computers.

The most successful of the workstation manufacturers were Sun Microsystems, Inc., started by people involved in enhancing the UNIX operating system, and, for a time, Silicon Graphics, Inc., which marketed machines for video and audio editing.

The microcomputer market now included personal computers, software, peripheral devices, and workstations. Within two decades this market had surpassed the market for mainframes and minicomputers in sales and every other measure. As if to underscore such growth, in 1996 Silicon Graphics, a workstation manufacturer, bought the star of the supercomputer manufacturers, Cray Research, and began to develop supercomputers as a sideline. Moreover, Compaq Computer Corporation—which had parlayed its success with portable PCs into a perennial position during the 1990s as the leading seller of microcomputers—bought the reigning king of the minicomputer manufacturers, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Compaq announced that it intended to fold DEC technology into its own expanding product line and that the DEC brand name would be gradually phased out. Microcomputers were not only outselling mainframes and minis, they were blotting them out.

Living in cyberspace

Ever smaller computers

Embedded systems

One can look at the development of the electronic computer as occurring in waves. The first large wave was the mainframe era, when many people had to share single machines. (The mainframe era is covered in the section The age of Big Iron.) In this view, the minicomputer era can be seen as a mere eddy in the larger wave, a development that allowed a favoured few to have greater contact with the big machines. Overall, the age of mainframes could be characterized by the expression “Many persons, one computer.”

The second wave of computing history was brought on by the personal computer, which in turn was made possible by the invention of the microprocessor. (This era is described in the section The personal computer revolution.) The impact of personal computers has been far greater than that of mainframes and minicomputers: their processing power has overtaken that of the minicomputers, and networks of personal computers working together to solve problems can be the equal of the fastest supercomputers. The era of the personal computer can be described as the age of “One person, one computer.”

Since the introduction of the first personal computer, the semiconductor business has grown to more than a quarter-trillion-dollar worldwide industry. However, this phenomenon is only partly ascribable to the general-purpose microprocessor, which accounts for about one-sixth of annual sales. The greatest growth in the semiconductor industry has occurred in the manufacture of special-purpose processors, controllers, and digital signal processors. These computer chips are increasingly being included, or embedded, in a vast array of consumer devices, including pagers, mobile telephones, music players, automobiles, televisions, digital cameras, kitchen appliances, video games, and toys. While the Intel Corporation may be safely said to dominate the worldwide microprocessor business, it has been outpaced in this rapidly growing multibillion-dollar industry by companies such as Motorola, Inc.; Hitachi, Ltd.; Texas Instruments Incorporated; NEC Corporation; and Lucent Technologies Inc. This ongoing third wave may be characterized as “One person, many computers.”

Handheld digital devices

The origins of handheld digital devices go back to the 1960s, when Alan Kay, a researcher at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), promoted the vision of a small, powerful notebook-style computer that he called the Dynabook. Kay never actually built a Dynabook (the technology had yet to be invented), but his vision helped to catalyze the research that would eventually make his dream feasible.

It happened by small steps. The popularity of the personal computer and the ongoing miniaturization of the semiconductor circuitry and other devices first led to the development of somewhat smaller, portable—or, as they were sometimes called, luggable—computer systems. The first of these, the Osborne 1, designed by Lee Felsenstein, an electronics engineer active in the Homebrew Computer Club in San Francisco, was sold in 1981. Soon most PC manufacturers had portable models. At first these portables looked like sewing machines and weighed in excess of 20 pounds (9 kg). Gradually they became smaller (laptop-, notebook-, and then sub-notebook-size) and came with more powerful processors. These devices allowed people to use computers not only in the office or at home but also while traveling—on airplanes, in waiting rooms, or even at the beach.

As the size of computers continued to shrink and microprocessors became more and more powerful, researchers and entrepreneurs explored new possibilities in mobile computing. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, several companies came out with handheld computers, called personal digital assistants (PDAs). PDAs typically replaced the cathode-ray-tube screen with a more compact liquid crystal display, and they either had a miniature keyboard or replaced the keyboard with a stylus and handwriting-recognition software that allowed the user to write directly on the screen. Like the first personal computers, PDAs were built without a clear idea of what people would do with them. In fact, people did not do much at all with the early models. To some extent, the early PDAs, made by Go Corporation and Apple, were technologically premature; with their unreliable handwriting recognition, they offered little advantage over paper-and-pencil planning books.

The potential of this new kind of device was realized in 1996 when Palm Computing, Inc., released the Palm Pilot, which was about the size of a deck of playing cards and sold for about $400—approximately the same price as the MITS Altair, the first personal computer sold as a kit in 1974. The Pilot did not try to replace the computer but made it possible to organize and carry information with an electronic calendar, telephone number and address list, memo pad, and expense-tracking software and to synchronize that data with a PC. The device included an electronic cradle to connect to a PC and pass information back and forth. It also featured a data-entry system called “graffiti,” which involved writing with a stylus using a slightly altered alphabet that the device recognized. Its success encouraged numerous software companies to develop applications for it.

In 1998 this market heated up further with the entry of several established consumer electronics firms using Microsoft’s Windows CE operating system (a stripped-down version of the Windows system) to sell handheld computer devices and wireless telephones that could connect to PCs. These small devices also often possessed a communications component and benefited from the sudden popularization of the Internet and the World Wide Web. In particular, the BlackBerry PDA, introduced by the Canadian company Research in Motion in 2002, established itself as a favourite in the corporate world because of features that allowed employees to make secure connections with their company’s databases.

In 2001 Apple introduced the iPod, a handheld device capable of storing 1,000 songs for playback. Apple quickly came to dominate a booming market for music players. The iPod could also store notes and appointments. In 2003 Apple opened an online music store, iTunes Store, and in the following software releases added photographs and movies to the media the iPod could handle. The market for iPods and iPod-like devices was second only to cellular telephones among handheld electronic devices.

While Apple and competitors grew the market for handheld devices with these media players, mobile telephones were increasingly becoming “smartphones,” acquiring more of the functions of computers, including the ability to send and receive e-mail and text messages and to access the Internet. In 2007 Apple once again shook up a market for handheld devices, this time redefining the smartphone market with its iPhone. The touch-screen interface of the iPhone was in its way more advanced than the graphical user interface used on personal computers, its storage rivaled that of computers from just a few years before, and its operating system was a modified version of the operating system on the Apple Macintosh. This, along with synchronizing and distribution technology, embodied a vision of ubiquitous computing in which personal documents and other media could be moved easily from one device to another. Handheld devices and computers found their link through the Internet.