Detect Windows Server version 32/64-bit in CLI

Question

What's the best and quickest way to detect whether you're running a 32 or 64-bit version of Windows Server from the command line?

(Cygwin is installed)

Answer 1

A slightly quicker way would be to check for the existence of the %ProgramFiles(x86)% directory. If it exists then you're running 64-bit, if it doesn't exist then you're running 32-bit.

Quick one-liner:

if exist "%ProgramFiles(x86)%" echo 64-bit

That will output 64-bit if the directory exists. That would fail, though, if it didn't exist as a variable but it did exist as a directory (as %ProgramFiles(x86)%).

You can also use the find tool to have a more accurate way to determine bitness.

set | find "ProgramFiles(x86)"

or using the systeminfo command previously

systeminfo | find /I "System type"

(included the /I to work across XP/2003/2008/etc)

Answer 2

systeminfo

It will list quite a bit, about 10 fields down there is one called System Type. This will tell you if it's x86 or x64

Answer 3

How about:

echo %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%

This will return x86 on 32-bit systems and AMD64 (or IA64) on 64-bit systems.

Answer 4

Although this is not the ideal answer, and systeminfo.exe should be your preferred method of determining the system type, i.e. 32-bit or 64-bit, this solution runs a little faster if you do not want to wait for systeminfo.exe to finish its work.

The command:

reg.exe query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion" | find "BuildLabEx"

With the correct changes to the registry query and search string you can also check for operating system versions as far back as Windows 95. systeminfo.exe is more exact and the correct way of querying, reg.exe query is faster and more backwards compatible.

Answer 5

systeminfo | find /I "System type"

This is locale dependent, and slow.

echo %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%

Notice, that it's x86 in 32-bit cmd.exe.

Correct way:

set Arch=x64
if "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%" == "x86" ( 
    if not defined PROCESSOR_ARCHITEW6432 set Arch=x86
)