How to Determine the Original Operating System Software

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Dave Andrews. Today I'm going to show you how to determine the original operating system of a computer. Let's go to our computer and the first thing that I'm going to do is show you how to determine what it's running right now. To do that, let's click on the Start button and then let's right click on computer or on Windows XP it's my computer, and then click properties and you'll see here that we're currently running a 32 bit operating system that is Windows Vista. Now we can tell from this that it's a 32 bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium. It displays all that information here. Windows XP might show Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional. Now what we're trying to do though is figure out the original operating system that was on this computer, let's say we bought it used or whatever and we're trying to reinstall that operating system. Now what you'll need to do in that case is actually look at the hardware of the computer, I'm going to pick up my laptop here to show you. What you're going to find on the computer somewhere if it came with Windows, is a little sticker and on laptops in most cases, it's on the bottom of the laptop. You'll find on desktops it's usually going to be on the back sort of on the plastic area. Now this sticker is actually a Microsoft sticker and mine is a little worn off, but you can usually tell it because it has a Microsoft logo right here, just says Microsoft and then up here at the very top as you can tell, mine is kind of worn, but it's going to say the actual operating system that was on that computer originally. This is the original equipment manufacturer sticker and it basically includes the product key that was used for the operating system as well as the type of operating system. This one if I read it closely, it says basically what we just say, Microsoft Vista Home Premium. So it's that easy to determine the original operating system software of a computer."