I know I can use an HTTP_USER_AGENT server variable to get some decent info about my customers systems when they visit my site.

However as far as the OS goes, it only passes the major/minor version of the OS.

So for XP I only get Windows NT 5.1

I am rolling out a new windows forms app that was built on .NET 2.0, and as you may or may not know, the .NET 2.0 framework requires service pack 2 in windows XP in order to install.

So I want to see if there is a way I can detect the service pack level of their system, so I can make recommendations on the page as to what they will need to do in order to install my software without issue.

My users are not very computer savy (most of them anyway) so it would be nice if I could give them detailed messages like

"You need to install XP Service Pack 2 before using this software, please visit this site to get it: <link to MS windows updates>"

My installer for the windows app does perform these checks as well, but it would be nice if I could do it at the browser level before they download the 30+MB file.

Any thoughts?