• 0

Windows 7 is windows vista v6.1!?


Question

I am programing a software to edit some windows seven features with java...

Well the most important thing is that the program should not run on any operating system other then windows 7

So what is the code to see if the os is windows 7?

I am using this code

		if(!System.getProperty("os.name").toLowerCase().equals("windows vista")||!System.getProperty("os.version").equals("6.1")){
		JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Win7Plus only works on windows 7", "Win7Plus",JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE);
		System.exit(0);
		}

Although it is working it still feels wrong!!!

i mean ---> System.getProperty("os.name").toLowerCase().equals("windows vista")

Am i doing this the write way or should i use another code????

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/846114-windows-7-is-windows-vista-v61/
Share on other sites

12 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

i think I'll stick with the code i am using now then.

thanks everyone for your replies.

Here is what i have done so far if anyone is interested to take a look.

it is only about 50 kb and need the jre

Editing file now...

Edited by Teddy*
  • 0
Going by Kernel Version wont work, im not sure what else you'd use though since im not actually a programmer

It will work, because it is not the "kernel version." It is the version number for the operating system as a whole. If you want to know if it is Windows 7/R2, you check for 6.1. End of story.

As for the string "windows vista," no, 7 is not called "Windows Vista" anywhere. I don't know Java so I have no idea why that would work. Perhaps the JVM is running in compatibility mode and thus thinking it's running on Vista, or maybe it just hasn't been updated and thinks it's Vista because it has no idea 7 exists. This is a Java issue, not a Windows issue, and one you should probably try to get to the bottom of to make sure your program will actually work. In fact, I just tried to run your .jar on my Windows 7 machine and it fails with an error saying it only runs on Windows 7. This is with the latest JVM.

  • 0

I've never believed this "backwards compatibility" line for one second--that's extremely inconsistent with MS's past history. Where's the relevant documentation to back that up on MSDN--because that's where it would matter (to developers), and I've only started hearing that line a few weeks before 7 was released. MS started publishing Win7 developer documentation for guidance months before that, and I've never seen that come from a source that targeted developers.

To the original poster--what "features" of Win7 are you editing? Do you really want to have to rewrite your detection code when Win8 comes out if your editing program still applies then? What about Server 2008? Is the fact that the ribbon API (for one) is getting backported to Vista relevant, and should your app then be made to work on Vista also?

For the longest time, MS has been strongly suggesting to look for the availability of features instead of coming up with crazy OS detection algorithms that can break when the next version is released.

  • 0
I've never believed this "backwards compatibility" line for one second--that's extremely inconsistent with MS's past history. Where's the relevant documentation to back that up on MSDN--because that's where it would matter (to developers), and I've only started hearing that line a few weeks before 7 was released. MS started publishing Win7 developer documentation for guidance months before that, and I've never seen that come from a source that targeted developers.

It is true. Earlier example code (going back further than just a few months before the launch) even used 7.0. It's not very inconsistent, as they've done it with several previous versions as well. I have no idea why you feel this is something that would be documented now. It's not like it actually matters to anyone. The whole issue is stupid.

For the longest time, MS has been strongly suggesting to look for the availability of features instead of coming up with crazy OS detection algorithms that can break when the next version is released.

Yes, they do, but people never listen. Keeping the same major version (as they did with 2000/XP/2003) means a small amount of programs that would otherwise break unless they had compatibility shims applied now just work. That's the gain. Where's the loss? There isn't any, except for the moronic flame wars on the net. It's just a number, and it's hilarious to see people go on long rants about how "NO NO NO NO!!!! 6.1 is not the version number of the OS!!! It's really 7.0!!! 6.1 is just what the "kernel" tells you as a lie!!! Blah blah!!" as if it having the version number somehow meant that Windows 7 (the product name) was no longer Windows 7.

  • 0
It is true. Earlier example code (going back further than just a few months before the launch) even used 7.0. It's not very inconsistent, as they've done it with several previous versions as well. I have no idea why you feel this is something that would be documented now. It's not like it actually matters to anyone. The whole issue is stupid.

Yes, they do, but people never listen. Keeping the same major version (as they did with 2000/XP/2003) means a small amount of programs that would otherwise break unless they had compatibility shims applied now just work. That's the gain. Where's the loss? There isn't any, except for the moronic flame wars on the net. It's just a number, and it's hilarious to see people go on long rants about how "NO NO NO NO!!!! 6.1 is not the version number of the OS!!! It's really 7.0!!! 6.1 is just what the "kernel" tells you as a lie!!! Blah blah!!" as if it having the version number somehow meant that Windows 7 (the product name) was no longer Windows 7.

The inconsistency part I'm referring to is the claim that the version number has been artificially kept to 6.x for compatibility purposes and nothing else.

I maintain that it's been kept at 6.x because from the kernel team's perspective, 7 is a relatively small jump ahead and not the huge architectural rewrite that going from 5.x to 6.x was[*] (or 4.x to 5.x before that).

The "compatibility" excuse is just something that was put out there by some marketing drone who wanted to dispel the growing notion that it's just a minor release and that if it weren't for compatibility's sake, they would otherwise have changed it to 7.0.

[*] Unlike others however, I certainly won't claim that little work has been made elsewhere--the biggest development effort just didn't take place in the kernel.

  • 0

First of all, it is not just a kernel version number. It is the OS version. The two are not separate. This is not Linux. Second, 7/R2 has substantial changes to the "kernel" all the way to critical parts like the scheduler (which is extremely risky business). Third, there actually were pages that referenced 7.0 on MSDN, but these have since been removed (like all pre-release documentation), not that it matters.

What 7 doesn't have much of is breaking changes. That combined with the major compatibility problems Vista had means that justifying any avoidable compatibility issues this time around was next to impossible. Windows 7 is so critically important to Microsoft. It's that simple. If they could have justified it, I'm certain they would have given it the version number 7.0 so it would look nicer and distance it from Vista. This is what a PR guy would have done, and it's unlikely that he'd accept "the developers just don't feel that it's worth the jump" as a valid reason for not changing it.

There doesn't have to be any PR conspiracy here. I certainly agree that there are no breaking architectural changes and that it is in that sense a "minor" release, but I feel that you're really grasping at straws. The "excuse" given is a valid one, so there's no real reason to doubt it.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • This sounds like underneath the nice marketing spin, either someone at Adobe got tired of their lazy devs and asked Microsoft to help them sort at least some of Adobe's ancestral spaghetti code to make it go faster, or Microsoft wanted Adobe's crap to run better on Windows to make it look better when compared to Apple, so they offered to intervene. Either way, GOOD.
    • My favorite file manager for Windows 11 finally gets a long-requested feature by Taras Buria Files is among the best File Explorer alternatives for Windows 10 and 11. This free app is packed with all sorts of features and conveniences, but there is one crucial feature that is still missing—Tree View. Fortunately, the latest update in the Preview channel finally delivers it. With version 4.1.4, which is now available for download in the Preview channel, developers implemented Tree View, a new mode that displays folders in an expandable hierarchy. Windows 11's stock File Explorer always had this feature, but it was nowhere to be found in Files until now. Starting with the latest preview update, you can expand each drive and its nested folders without leaving the current location and then open the folder you need in the main view. To try Tree View in Files, update the app to the latest preview version, then click the small arrow next to a drive to expand its content. The developers say they are rolling out Tree View in Preview first to gather feedback from users and improve the feature before bringing it to all in the stable channel. In addition to Tree View, Files 4.1.14 improves the Windows Fonts folder. You can now preview each font directly in Files with no need to open the built-in font viewer. For now, these two features are only available in the Preview channel. For those using the stable release, developers recently released version 4.1.3, with improvements for the built-in tag system, on-demand folder size calculation, and plenty of various fixes. You can check out the full release notes here. You can download Files from the Microsoft Store (paid version) or its official website (free).
    • Who is paying for this 30x scale-up? Its sounds expensive.
    • Millions of users to benefit from Windows 11's new performance boost on Adobe Photoshop by Sayan Sen Despite the advent of AI-generated imagery, Adobe's Photoshop remains one of the most popular tools on this planet. Adobe does not have a publicly reported total user count but it's probably not wrong to assume there are millions. As of 2025, Adobe Creative Cloud has had approximately 41 million paid subscribers, many of whom likely use Photoshop. In addition, more than 166,000 companies worldwide are apparently also using the app. These figures are according to a very recent report by SQ Magazine. Out of them, it is fair to assume that many are probably running Windows. As such, there is good news for these users as Microsoft has announced Photoshop is getting a big 20% performance boost on x86-64 (AMD64) systems and a 13% bump-up on Arm devices. This is definitely great news for them as many have complained about the slow performance and general sluggishness of Photoshop on Windows 11 ever since the advent of the latter back in 2021. If you are wondering how Microsoft managed to do this, the answer lies in a combination of compiler-level optimizations and a technology called Sample Profile Guided Optimization (SPGO). According to Microsoft, Adobe worked closely with the company’s Visual C++ team and adopted the latest MSVC toolchain enhancements together with SPGO to squeeze more performance out of Photoshop’s CPU-bound workloads. Unlike traditional Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), which requires developers to create special instrumented builds and run lengthy training workloads, SPGO gathers performance data directly from optimized release binaries. This means Adobe could collect real-world usage information which gives a major advantage to this technique, as companies could leverage data collected from actual customer workloads rather than only relying on synthetic benchmark runs. In theory, this should allow optimizations to better reflect how users interact with software in the real world. Thanks to this, there are improvements to code layout, function inlining, hot-and-cold code separation, and other low-level tweaks that help processors execute instructions more efficiently. Essentially the compiler is better able to identify “hot” code paths, those which are most frequently executed, and optimize them accordingly.
    • "The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months¨ I'd prefer to see the lowest price in over a year
  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      Jocimo earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      suprememobiles48 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Prasann earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Prasann earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      521
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      174
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      90
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      81
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      70
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!