Most office employees do not shut down computers at night – they just lock the workstations and switch off the monitor but that doesn’t stop the computers from consuming power.
According to estimates, 30% of all office PCs in the US are left on all night while 18% of office workers in UK admit that they have never switched off computers over night or at weekends.
Related: How to Shut Down Windows Faster ?
So do you remember the exact date or time when you last switched on the computer ? Here’s a simple DOS command to help you out:
systeminfo | find /i “boot time”
This will show the time when you last rebooted the computer.
Subtract that from the current date-time to know for how long you have been running the computer.
Alternative, you could start Windows Task Manager (Alt+Ctrl+Del), switch to the Performance tab and you should see a field that says “Up Time” – that’s even more convenient but some computers have Task managers disabled.
Bonus Tip: Run systeminfo | find /i “install date” to know the date when your installed Windows on the PC.
Related: Do You Shut Off The Computer or Hibernate
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/date-time-when-you-last-turn-on-computer/2694/
Tags: DOS, feature, shutdown, Software, Tips, Tricks, Tutorials
Reader Comments
In Linux you just run the command “uptime”.
systeminfo does not work on XP.
Written by benjamin on 03.26.08
These worked for me in XP:
systeminfo | find /i “system up time”
systeminfo | find /i “original install date”
Written by Dan on 03.26.08
This is what I got.
C:\>systeminfo | find /i “system up time”
ERROR: Not found.
C:\>
Written by benjamin on 03.26.08
With Windows, it is necessary to reboot every 2-3 days, because if you don’t, you notice that your system slows down, even if you close all unnecessary processes. This is because of a large number of low level scripts that are started by some processes, but not ended properly.
With Linux, however, this problem is not so bad. I’ve been running my Linux system for over a month now, and it doesn’t seem to have slowed down one bit :D.
Written by PCLinuxOS 2008 on 03.26.08
uptime.exe is supposed to work under Windows XP Home, but I’ve only ever used it under Windows 2000.
You can get it from link
Written by Rowan on 03.26.08
Well, Neither XP is showing any result of systeminfo command nor “upTime” is getting displayed in performance tab. Is any way to enable/display those in that tab?
Written by Raminder on 03.26.08
If you have trouble running uptime.exe or systeminfo command on your Windows machine, open Task Manager and switch to the tab that says Performance. There you’ll see the “uptime” value.
Written by Amit Agarwal on 03.26.08
i guess people might be getting different parameters depending on their OS. I got no output when i passed “boot time” as a parameter, but just systeminfo gave me all info with parameter names, which worked individually, including “system up time”
Written by Niraj on 03.26.08
Forgot to mention, you can use uptime.exe to check the up time of other compatible PCs on your network.
Written by Rowan on 03.27.08
I have WinXP Professional, but I am not able to see the “uptime” field under the Performance tab. I see the following fields: CPU Usage, CPU Usage History, PF Usage, Page File Usage History, Totals (Handles, process, threads), Physical Memory (Total, Available, System Cache), Commit Charge (Total, Limit, Peak), Kernel Memory (Total, Paged, Nonpaged).
Written by AvidReader on 03.27.08
i used the command on dos prompt systeminfo | find /i “boot time” but it is doesn’t display any thing.I have windows server 2003 operating system.
Written by Randhir on 03.28.08
I typed
C:\>systeminfo | find /i “system up time”
and got
System Up Time : N/A
Written by Srinivas on 03.31.08
I want to know the last turn on time of the computer.
example: yesterday evening before leaving office i have switched of my computer at 6PM. somebody opened my PC knowing my password. i want to know the last turn on time of my computer.
Written by sudarshan on 11.06.08
@Sudarshan
download link and then run the following command:
uptime /s /d:10/24/2008 | find “Boot”
Written by Rowan on 11.06.08
C:\>systeminfo | find /i “up time”
System Up Time: 0 Days, 8 Hours, 27 Minutes, 48 Seconds
Written by Max on 03.02.09