Windows 11 Product Name in registry

Nageswara Rao Y 26

In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion there are some things you could try to use to distinguish between Windows 10 and 11 but it seems that the version registry keys looks same as Windows 10 in Beta build of Windows 11 Version 21H2 (OS Build 22000.176).

The registry keys such as "ProductName", "CurrentMajorVersionNumber", "CurrentMinorVersion" under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, shows as Windows 10. Please let us know if this will be changed soon? Do we expect these values on Windows 11 future builds or official builds?

Andrew S. Baker 6 Reputation points

2021-11-29T16:31:32.86+00:00

This is by design, primarily for compatibility issues, so that a ton of software doesn't stop installing because it thinks that Windows 11 is an unsupported operating system.

This is not a new issue/concern. You either have to use the Windows Manifest to understand the version info, or if you choose to use the registry, you will have to track the build number to have some assurance of what edition of Windows is running.

I don't expect this situation to change for future releases of Windows 11.

(After all, it still lists the legacy "CurrentVersion" as v6.3)
Yaakov @ WTG 6 Reputation points

2021-11-29T22:41:26.38+00:00

If by "Windows Manifest" you mean the application manifest GUIDs, as far as I am aware there is no new compatibility GUID for Windows 11, so that's a non-starter.
MikeRoz 6 Reputation points

2023-05-31T16:40:00.3033333+00:00

This is just another lamest thing MS makes!

If a s/w needs Windows 10 to function, it needs to know it runs on Win10 and not on Win 8 or 11. If you, as an end user, accept a risk running such a s/w item on Win 11, then there is a compatibility approach. Remember app shortcuts where you could choose between Win 95, 98, XP, etc.?

I see the following Win10 keys unchanged (read: wasted) in Win11:
CurrentMajorVersionNumber REG_DWORD 0xa
CurrentVersion REG_SZ 6.3
ProductName REG_SZ Windows 10 Enterprise

MS makes this easy to use method obsolete, but with the same approach other methods will become unreliable and obsolete, just creating even more mess.

16 answers

Mathew Burazin 11 Reputation points

2021-10-06T19:16:55.297+00:00

This is not great as we have reporting tools we supply customers that rely on this being accurate.
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Darrell Gorter 1,216 Reputation points

2021-10-06T19:25:58.663+00:00

Hello,
This is not changing.
What are we trying to accomplish by querying those values?
As much detail about why you are looking at that would be useful.
There may be other ways of doing this,
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Ben Hunter 1 Reputation point

2021-10-06T19:24:49.527+00:00

This is something we are interested in seeing resolved too for accurate detection & reporting purposes.
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Liam Power 1 Reputation point

2021-10-07T08:05:17.517+00:00

We rely on the version number being accurate in our usage and crash reporting analytics. We currently can't distinguish between a Win 10 and Win 11 user. It was correct for all previous releases of Windows. It needs to be fixed ASAP.
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Mathew Burazin 11 Reputation points

2021-10-08T00:10:18.207+00:00

If it helps you can still tell it's WIn11 if it states 22000 but it far from what we should expect.

Version 10.0.22000.194

Liam Power 1 Reputation point

2021-10-08T10:06:06.347+00:00

Thanks @Mathew Burazin this can be useful to use in some circumstances for us. However, we have existing deployments in the field which return only Windows XX and not the detailed version number. MS need to fix it in windows 11.
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Castorix31 81,461 Reputation points

2021-10-07T08:38:03.047+00:00

Could someone test this small exe : WindowsVersion.zip
which reads the Windows version,
just to check if it still does not work on Windows 11 (I only have Windows 10)
Thanks.
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Castorix31 81,461 Reputation points

2021-10-08T11:21:21.113+00:00

Nobody can test ?

Andy Tabor 6 Reputation points

2021-10-08T16:01:29.063+00:00

For both:

Major Version: 10
Minor Version: 0
Build Number: 22000

Castorix31 81,461 Reputation points

2021-10-08T16:39:10.543+00:00

Thanks
Then it still doesn't work...

Castorix31 81,461 Reputation points

2022-02-03T13:00:20.993+00:00

I updated it by using Winbrand.dll that Winver uses to get the Windows label
I get "Windows 10 Éducation" on my french Windows 10 OS
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Pavel yannara Mirochnitchenko 11,616 Reputation points

2021-10-12T05:10:42.933+00:00

Windows 11 has been officially released 5.10 and still its build version is 10.0.22000.194. This might bring us problems in Configuration Managere and Intune distributions later.
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