How-can-I-get-BIOS-date-and-version-under-Win-9XMENT2000XP-of-Windows


            Title: How can I get BIOS date and version under Win 9X/ME/NT/2000/XP of Windows?
Question: If you want to get BIOS date and version in Windows NT/2000/XP you've gonna have problems.
Answer:
 Sometimes you might want to get BIOS date and version of the BIOS to use it
to create some protection for your program. Under Windows 9X it is very easy
to do that. Here's an example:
procedure GetBiosInfo (var Name, Copyright, Info, Date: string);
const BiosName = $FE061;
 BiosCopyright = $FE091;
 BiosInfo = $FEC71;
 BiosDate = $FFFF5;
begin
 try
 Name := string (PChar (Ptr (BiosName)));
 except
 Name := '';
 end;
 try
 Copyright := string (PChar (Ptr (BiosCopyright)));
 except
 Copyright := '';
 end;
 try
 Info := string (PChar (Ptr (BiosInfo)));
 except
 Info := '';
 end;
 try
 Date := string (PChar (Ptr (BiosDate)));
 except
 Date := '';
 end;
end;
But under Windows NT/2000/XP you've gonna have problems with this procedure 
because the address space of the bios is protected by the OS an every time you
try to access these addresses an exception will be thrown. Happily you can
find BIOS date and vesion in the registry(this is valid for Win 9X/ME too but
the registry key is different). It is easy to obtain date from the registry
but you've gonna have some problems reading the version information because it 
is stored as multi-string value (something like multirow string) which is not 
supported by TRegistry class. You can still get it as binary value and with
little effort convert it to string list. I've done it for you. Here's an 
example:
 
//this is the method which gets multi-string values from the registry
//and converts them to TStringlist
function ReadMultirowKey(reg: TRegistry; Key: string): TStrings;
const bufsize = 100;
var
 i: integer;
 s1: string;
 sl: TStringList;
 bin: array[1..bufsize] of char;
begin
 try
 result := nil;
 sl := nil;
 sl := TStringList.Create;
 if not Assigned(reg) then
 raise Exception.Create('TRegistry object not assigned.');
 FillChar(bin,bufsize,#0);
 reg.ReadBinaryData(Key,bin,bufsize);
 i := 1;
 s1 := '';
 while i begin
 if ord(bin[i]) = 32 then
 s1 := s1 + bin[i]
 else
 begin
 if Length(s1) 0 then
 begin
 sl.Add(s1);
 s1 := '';
 end;
 end;
 inc(i);
 end;
 result := sl;
 except
 sl.Free;
 raise;
 end;
end;
//this is an example of getting BIOS info from the registry
//under Windows NT/2000/XP
procedure TBIOSInfo.GetRegInfoWinNT;
var
 Registryv : TRegistry;
 RegPath : string;
 sl : TStrings;
begin
 Params.Clear;
 RegPath := '\HARDWARE\DESCRIPTION\System';
 registryv:=tregistry.Create;
 registryv.rootkey:=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE;
 sl := nil;
 try
 registryv.Openkey(RegPath,false);
 ShowMessage('BIOS Date: '+RegistryV.ReadString('SystemBIOSDate'));
 sl := ReadMultirowKey(RegistryV,'SystemBIOSVersion');
 ShowMessage('BIOS Version: '+sl.Text);
 except
 end;
 Registryv.Free;
 if Assigned(sl) then sl.Free;
end;
Now when you know how to get BIOS date and version under all kinds of windows
you must only make a function which recognises the version of Windows currentry
running and use one of the two methods to obtain these values. This could
be easily done using JEDI Component Library's function IsWinNT or using the 
standard windows API funstion GetVersionEx.
System Delphi
