How to determine which versions of the .NET Framework are installed and whether service packs have been applied (318785)

SUMMARY

This article describes how to determine which versions of the Microsoft .NET Framework are installed on your computer. This article also helps you determine whether any .NET Framework service packs are installed on the computer. For more information about service packs for the .NET Framework, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

318836 How to obtain the latest .NET Framework service pack

The Microsoft Update service updates the versions of the .NET Framework that are installed on the computer. To make sure that the computer is always up to date, enable Automatic Updates in Control Panel.

MORE INFORMATION

Versions of the .NET Framework

There are currently three released versions of the .NET Framework. The releases have the following version information.

.NET Framework version	Revision	Version
1.0	Original RTM Service Pack 1 Service Pack 2 Service Pack 3	1.0.3705.0 1.0.3705.209 1.0.3705.288 1.0.3705.6018
1.1	Original RTM Service Pack 1 Included with Windows Server 2003 32-bit Service Pack 1	1.1.4322.573 1.1.4322.2032 1.1.4322.2300
2.0	Original RTM	2.0.50727.42

Note The Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 is included with the 32-bit version of Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

Note This information should be used as a general guide for determining which versions of the .NET Framework are installed on a computer. Also note that files that have a later version listed may be files that were shipped as part of a hotfix or a hotfix rollup package. The hotfix .NET Framework file versions are outside the scope of this article.

Determine which versions of the .NET Framework are installed on a computer

The easiest way to determine which versions of the .NET Framework are installed on a computer is to locate the %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework folder. You can paste the listed address for the Framework folder into a Windows Explorer address bar to navigate to the Framework folder. The three released versions of the .NET Framework are contained in the following folders:

v1.0.3705
v1.1.4322
v2.0.50727

Note If you see other directories that have a vN.N.NXXXX format that are not listed in this article, the versions may be beta versions or pre-released versions of the .NET Framework. Those versions are outside the scope of this article.

To determine which versions of the .NET Framework are installed on a computer, follow these steps:

Open any one of the folders in the previous list, and then locate the Mscorlib.dll file.
Right-click the file, and then click Properties.
Click the Version tab, and then note the file version.
Use the previous list to determine which version of the .NET Framework is installed on the computer, and then click OK.

Repeat these steps for each version of the .NET Framework on the computer.

Troubleshooting the .NET Framework installations

For more information about troubleshooting the .NET Framework installation, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

908077 How to troubleshoot Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 installation issues

824643 How to troubleshoot Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 installation issues

830646 How to troubleshoot Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 installation issues on Microsoft Windows Server 2003

REFERENCES

For more information about the benefits of the .NET Framework, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

829019 Benefits of the Microsoft .NET Framework

For more information about the various configutations of the .NET Framework 1.1, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

915756 How to install and update the .NET Framework 1.1 on different operating systems

For more information about file versions, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://support.microsoft.com/dllhelp

For developers, Aaron Stebner's WebLog has two entries that are interesting. To view the entry that contains Visual C++ sample code to programmatically detect .NET Framework 1.0 , 1.1, and 2.0 and their service packs, visit the following Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Web site:

http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2004/09/18/231253.aspx

To view the entry that discusses versions of the .NET Framework in the context of Microsoft Visual Studio, visit the following MSDN Web site:

http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/07/12/438245.aspx