[2005] Detect OS details of site user?

[kleinma]

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?

[space_monkey]

sorry didn't read the question thoroughly.

[kleinma]

lol its ok.. I deleted my post after you deleted yours

[kleinma]

also it could be an IE only thing, the functionality doesn't have to extend to other browsers. My client base is probably about 99% IE

[mendhak]

When detecting the HTTP_USER_AGENT look for a string in it, SV1 (capitalized, I believe). That will indicate that they are using Internet Explorer and have SP2 for Windows XP.

[kleinma]

Mend,

That is really interesting, because when I test my user agent string, I get

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)

However I do believe you because I searched around and I did find sources from Microsoft stating what you said.

So I am not sure why my PC (which is XP SP2) would not have this SV1 in the user agent.

[kleinma]

I think I figured it out.

It would seem in IE7, SV1 is not present, but IE7 requires SP2 anyway, so SV1 only shows up on IE6's USER AGENT string.

So I can check for IE7, and know its SP2, or IE6 and check for the SV1 variable.

Sorry, can't rep ya at the moment.. Guess I did too recently.

[mendhak]

Aaah, the intricacies of interdependent enterprise software.