How do I determine whether my Windows installation is 64 or 32 bit?

Question

Does anyone know how I can find this information? System properties does not specify the version, winver does not specify this either.

Answer 1

Go to Control Panel > System and Maintenance > System

And Look at the 4th row under system

Answer 2

You can see this in the system control panel applet - I see an entry "system type" there which mentions "32-bit Operating System"

Answer 3

Some command-line ways to get to that information:

You can take a look at the PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE environment variable. This will be "x86" for a 32-bit OS and AMD64 for x86_64 (dunno the value for Itanium right now, but probably "IA64" or similar):

> echo %processor_architecture%
AMD64

> echo %processor_architecture%
x86

This even works with a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit-capable CPU.

Another way—though not in ancient versions of Windows—would be to use WMI:

> wmic os get OSArchitecture
OSArchitecture
64-bit

> wmic os get OSArchitecture
OSArchitecture
32-bit

Answer 4

I found a link that successfully identifies the differences at Microsoft Support:

• Click Start, type system in the Start Search box, and then click system in the Programs list.
• The operating system is displayed as follows:
  • For a 64-bit version operating system: 64-bit Operating System appears for the System type under System.
  • For a 32-bit version operating system: 32-bit Operating System appears for the System type under System.