How Long Has My Computer Been Running? Get to Know My Computer’s Uptime

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If you are like me who likes to leave my computer running on 24/7 basis whenever it’s possible, have you ever checked how long your computer has been up and running and when was the last time you turned your computer on?

Let’s find it out.

Method 1 – from Task Manager

Right-click on the Taskbar, and click Task Manager, and select Performance tab once in it and choose CPU.

Task Manager Uptime 600x446 - How Long Has My Computer Been Running? Get to Know My Computer’s Uptime

Method 2 – from Command Line

Geeks are cool because they like the command line. So let’s open the command prompt window by hitting Win+R keyboard shortcut and typing in cmd in the open box.

Win R + CMD - How Long Has My Computer Been Running? Get to Know My Computer’s Uptime

And type in “systeminfo” in the command prompt window. Scroll the window a bit up to look for the System Boot Time from the output.

SystemInfo boot time 600x303 - How Long Has My Computer Been Running? Get to Know My Computer’s Uptime

Oops, it only tells us when the computer was booted. But I think that’s fine. As a geek, we can do the calculation ourselves, can’t we?

Bonus, if you are a geek who also likes SysInternals toolset, you can use psinfo.exe to find out your computer’s uptime right from the output.

PSInfo uptime 600x303 - How Long Has My Computer Been Running? Get to Know My Computer’s Uptime

Method 3: An old school command line Uptime.exe

Uptime.exe is a standalone program that is originally designed for Windows NT Server. You could get the command line executable file from Windows NT directory but since no one is using Windows NT anymore, you can actually get it from CodePlex directly. Download it, extract it, and run it.

Z:\Users\s184\Downloads>uptime
 15:56:35 uptime 6 days, 04:41:40

Method 4: A WMIC way

Right, here you go:

wmic os get lastbootuptime
image - How Long Has My Computer Been Running? Get to Know My Computer’s Uptime

Method 5: the Net way

Yep, the NET command line delivers as well:

net stats work
image 1 - How Long Has My Computer Been Running? Get to Know My Computer’s Uptime

Method 6: the PowerShell way

And, how can we forget about the power of the PowerShell:

(Get-CimInstance Win32_OperatingSystem).LastBootupTime
image 2 - How Long Has My Computer Been Running? Get to Know My Computer’s Uptime

15 COMMENTS

  1. the problem with systeminfo is that it does not cater for hibernation. Checking the network card connected time works. Can this be checked with powerscript?

    • hmm…don’t think there is a way. You can find out when your computer first installed by the command line systeminfo but you can’t find how long your computer has been up right from the day it’s installed. I don’t think Windows ever tracks that information.

  2. Thanks for great tutorial. I wondered why the times are different when using systeminfo and net commands in my computer. I mean, method 2 and method 5 yields different results on my PC. It has to do something with what @Henrik says, I think.

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