Windows 10 upgrade worked - but programs believe they are on Windows 8

I upgraded to Windows 10 and everything is working as expected. No crashes and nothing, everything fine.

However, there is one thing that bothers me:

Some programs obviously believe they would be running under Windows 8. An example is the XAMPP Control Panel (newest version):

Initializing Control Panel
Windows Version: Windows 8 64-bit
...

When I check the registry, the keys under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
point to Windows 10: "BuildLab" and "CurrentBuild" and so on all point to the 10240 build of Windows 10.

However, I in fact still have a reference to Windows 8.1 in there:
The key "CurrentVersion" still has the value "6.3".

Is that normal?

Have you upgraded as well (and not done a clean installation)?

What does the value "CurrentVersion" under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion say for you?

Joergi said:

Is that normal?

Yes. A clean install (a couple of days ago for me) of Windows 10 has the same in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion



Don't worry about it.

hTconeM9user said:

Thank you I was trying to let him see how mine is set out and thought that I was right
Two heads as the saying goes are better than one

You aren't wrong sir (or right) , I was answering his specific question about registry values for a clean install of Windows 10. You didn't answer that so I though I would.

Thank you for your help guys! Much appreciated! :)

So, if I get this wrong information, e.g. in the XAMPP Control Panel, then it is not that my installation of Windows 10 is somehow giving the wrong value, but the control panel is somehow working incorrectly with how it retrieves the version. (And if this "6.3" should in fact not be there, then this is a problem for all Windows 10 installations, also for cleanly installed ones, and does not have its cause in the upgrade I did.)

I think I will then go ahead and bug the author of that control panel software to see, if he can fix it to detect the OS properly.

halasz said:

Yes. A clean install (a couple of days ago for me) of Windows 10 has the same in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

Don't worry about it.

This is a clean install. If you think the "6.3" is a MS error then raise it with them.

A better solution is something like this:

Code:

$OS = Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem

If(-not $OS.Caption.Contains("10")) 
{Read-Host -Prompt "This script only works with Windows 10.  Press Enter to exit."
exit
}

halasz said:

This is a clean install. If you think the 6.3 is a MS error then raise it with them.

Puhh, I am not sure, if this 6.3 is an error or not. But, yeah, it looks wrong. All I can say is that some programmers obviously think they can use it to determine the OS version, which does not work that way in Windows 10. The functions GetVersion() und GetVersionEx() have been deprecated and should no longer be used. However, there also are other ways to figure the correct version. Other applications manage to do that as well - I actually think the problem is with the failing applications then.