Exercises in .NET with Andras Nemes

How to find various machine-level system information with C# .NET

The Environment class holds a range of properties that help you describe the system your app is running on. Here come some examples with inline comments:

//returns true on my PC as it is a 64-bit OS
bool is64BitOperatingSystem = Environment.Is64BitOperatingSystem;
//returns the machine name, in my case ANDRAS1
string machineName = Environment.MachineName;
			
//returns information about the operating system version, build, major, minor etc.
OperatingSystem os = Environment.OSVersion;
//returns the platform id as an enumeration, in my case it's Win32NT
PlatformID platform = os.Platform;			
//the currently installed service pack, Service Pack 1 in my case
string servicePack = os.ServicePack;
//the toString version of the OS, this is "Microsoft Windows NT 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1" on this PC
string version = os.VersionString;

//I have 4 processors on this PC
int processorCount = Environment.ProcessorCount;

//returns 2 logical drives: C: and D:
string[] logicalDrives = Environment.GetLogicalDrives();

//this is how to find all environmental variables of the system and iterate through them
IDictionary envVars = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariables();
foreach (string key in envVars.Keys)
{
	//e.g. the JAVA_HOME env.var is set to "C:\Progra~1\Java\jdk1.7.0_51\"
	Debug.WriteLine(string.Concat("key: ", key, ": ", envVars[key]));
}

//retrieve the current CLR version, in my case it's "4.0.30319.18444"
Version clrVersion = Environment.Version;

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