How do you tell how long Windows has been installed.

[forjonny]

I went in Event Viewer and saw some dates from 2005. I went into System Restore and saw only a week ago of Restore points. Some programs like Roxio says 2005 as well under the Properties of the icon.

Does these dates indicate when the programs or document folders were created? Or does the Windows CD put the date on the installed document folder?

How is one to tell how long the OS has been on the pc otherwise?

[Train]

All you need to do is open Windows Explorer, right click on the Windows folder and go to properties ... and you will see something that says Created: date .. this date should be consistent with the creation date of Program Files etc.

For XP Pro, you can also open a command prompt box and then just type "systeminfo" without the quotations and hit enter.

Now read the Original Install Date line.

[Ol'Tunzafun]

AIDA32 (http://www.majorgeeks.com/download181.html) will confirm that for you.