CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowspowershellarchitectureprocessor
seagull
seagull

Reputation: 217

Find architecture of processor independent of OS in PowerShell

I am trying to detect whether a device's processor would support a 64-bit Windows Operating System installation without paying any attention to the bitness of the Windows Operating System installed on it at the time of the check. I am looking to do this via PowerShell (3.0 minimum), but I can also employ Batch or VBScript by invoking cmd and cscript respectively. The code must be executable via a non-interactive script, with values being returned without any need for user interaction.

The following methods do not work on my testing device, a 32-bit Windows 10 VM which the Settings app identifies as containing an x64-based Processor:

I noted above that the Settings app can gather this information to tell a user that their device would theoretically support installation of a 64-bit Windows Operating System. Knowing this makes me loth to use a third-party command-line tool (although it remains a viable last resort).

The use case will be to perform this check and then spin off an if clause with the information.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3099

Answers (2)

Flippertie
Flippertie

Reputation: 51

Using VB Script you can check AddressWidth for OS type and DataWidth for CPU type. Put the following in a .vbs file:

address_width=  GetObject("winmgmts:root\cimv2:Win32_Processor='cpu0'").AddressWidth
data_width= GetObject("winmgmts:root\cimv2:Win32_Processor='cpu0'").DataWidth

WScript.Echo "Running " & address_width _
    & " Bit Windows on " & data_width & " Bit processor."

There are plenty of ways to determine whether Windows is 32 or 64 bit - but this is the best way I've found to check the Processor type. Took me some time to find it so I thought I'd share in case anyone else is looking :-)

Upvotes: 1

Jeff Zeitlin
Jeff Zeitlin

Reputation: 10799

The Win32_Processor WMI class has a property Architecture. This takes the following values, based on the processor type:

  • 0 for an x86
  • 1 for MIPS
  • 2 for Alpha
  • 3 for PowerPC
  • 6 for ia64
  • 9 for x64

So, on a computer with a Core i7 processor, (Get-WMIObject -Class Win32_Processor).Architecture will return 9, telling you that it's an x64 processor - even if you've installed a 32-bit Windows on it.

Upvotes: 6

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