Not many users assemble PC on their own and install Windows or check their PCs’ health. Most users simply purchase a packaged laptop or PC which comes with pre-installed Windows 11 OS. After purchasing a computer, you may want to find out the last installation date of Windows 11 to find the status of your device. In this article, we will explain various methods to find the installation date in Windows 11.
Why Check the Installation Date?
These are some of the most common reasons why users check their installation date of Windows 11.
- You bought your device with Windows pre-installed, so you would want to make sure it is not outdated.
- For periodic maintenance of your operating system.
- To keep Windows up to date, utilize updated features on Windows, especially security updates.
How to Find Installation Date in Windows 11?
Here are various methods to check the installation date in your Windows 11. Remember, all these methods will show the installation date of latest Windows update on your computer.
1. Find Installation Date from Update History
Windows 11 uses Settings app to display useful information which previous you could view on Control Panel.
- Press “Windows + I” keys to open the Settings application.
- Click on “Windows Update” option and navigate to “Update history” section.
- You will see “Feature Updates”, “Quality Updates”, “Definition Updates” and “Other Updates” section.
- Click on any section to find the latest installation date showing with name of the update.
- For example, you can find the installation date of “Windows 11, version 22H2” major update under “Feature Updates” section.
2. Through System Settings
Though the above method is easy, you need to expand the correct section to find the installation date of major version which may be confusing. If you simply want to find the date of latest major Windows installation on your system, then follow the below instructions.
- When you are in the Settings app, go to System section from the left side of the screen.
- When the System is selected, scroll down until you find the About tab and click on it.
- On the right side, there is a section named Windows Specification. Under this section, you can see the installation date of your Windows along with its Version and Edition.
3. Using Command Prompt
The second method is to find out the installation date using the Command Prompt app. Follow the steps mentioned below:
- Type cmd in the Search bar, and the top application that would appear would be Command Prompt. Click on the Command Prompt application.
- When the application is open, you must type the below command and press enter. Alternatively, you can copy the command below, paste it in the Command Prompt and press enter.
systeminfo | find "Install Date"- You will see the original install date after executing the command.
- Instead of going through the system settings as explained in methods 1, you can also simply use systeminfo command to find all system information details. This includes original install date, OS name, build, etc.
As you can see, after running systeminfo command, we can see the original installation date.
4. Using Windows PowerShell App
You can also use Windows PowerShell app to find the Windows installation date.
- Type PowerShell in the search bar and open Windows PowerShell.
- Run the following command, and after execution, you will see the installation date.
([WMI]'').ConvertToDateTime((Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem).InstallDate)
You can also use the PowerShell registry command to find the Windows installation date. Although this command is quite complex and lengthy, you can copy it from down below.
[timezone]::CurrentTimeZone.ToLocalTime(([datetime]'1/1/1970').AddSeconds($(get-itemproperty 'HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion').InstallDate))
Note: Windows 11 uses Terminal app as a default command line interface. Therefore, you will see both Command Prompt and PowerShell will open with Terminal app which is a default setting.
5. Through Registry Editor Application
As you can see the above PowerShell command grabs the date and converts it from Windows Registry. Therefore, you can directly check the date from the Registry Editor. For that, you need to follow these steps.
- Type Registry in the search bar, and the autocomplete function of Windows will show you the top option of the Registry Editor.
- Open the Registry Editor application and copy paste the following path in the address bar and press enter. Alternatively, you can navigate to the location from the sidebar items.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\
- The “Current Version” folder will show large number of items in the right pane. You can find InstallDate and InstallTime items which stores installation date and time respectively.
- Double click on InstallDate and select Base as Decimal and copy the number showing in “Value data” box.
- Now go to unixtimestamp site, and paste the number you copied into the Converter. After converting, you can find the latest Windows installation date on your device as shown in the screenshot below.
6. From File Explorer
Another method to check the Windows installation date is through File Explorer. However, this will show the
- Press “Windows + E” keys and open File Explorer app.
- Go to the drive where Windows is installed, mostly in C: drive.
- Open the drive and locate the folder named Windows.
- Go to “View” and select “Details” option to arrange the items in details view.
- Right-click on header and select “Date modified” and “Date selected” columns.
- Modified date indicates the last installation date while the creation date is when the folder was added in your computer first.
- Though these dates not necessarily and accurately indicate Windows installation, you can get an overall odea using these dates.
Final Words
If you are here checking for the installation date of your Windows, it might mean that your system is facing some issues or you want to update it to the latest version. After finding the installation date, you can use the Windows 11 release history page from Wikipedia to understand the features released after the date. Make sure the updates are not paused under “Windows Update > Update history” section in Setting app to get the latest features installed automatically.
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