Display Windows 8 Edition & Build Version on Your Desktop
Today we are going to share a simple trick to display the details about your Windows 8 right on your desktop. In earlier versions of Windows, these details included the version of the operating system and build number only but in Windows 8, Microsoft has also included the install directory as well.
You can display Windows edition and build details by going to the following registry path.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Browse to the above mentioned path and look for a DWORD PaintDesktopVersion. Double click on it change its value to 1.
If you only do this, Windows version and build details will be shown as follows:
But in Windows 8, Microsoft has included a new DWORD value that overrides the value of PaintDesktopVersion and additionally displays Windows installation directory. This DWORD is named as: DisplayVersion
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
Go to the above path and look for a DWORD DisplayVersion and change its value to 1.
Note that if you do not find this DWORD in the above mentioned path, then you can create one yourself. Right Click in the right pane and in the New menu, look for DWORD Value (32-bit), name it as DisplayVersion and set its value to 1.
Once you do this, your Windows details will be shown in the bottom right corner of your Desktop.
Note: If you are using the latest DWORD i.e. DisplayVersion then you don’t have to enable two DWORDs i.e. DisplayVersion and PaintDesktopVersion. Becasue in Windows 8, DisplayVersion does the job of PaintDesktopVersion as well and it will display all the details single-handedly.
But if you want to display only the version and build details, then use PaintDesktopVersion as now installation directory will not be shown.
You can simply change the values to their default or delete them to hide these details.
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