I need to programatically determine whether .NET 3.5 is installed. I thought it would be easy:
<% Response.Write(Environment.Version.ToString()); %>
Which returns "2.0.50727.1434" so no such luck...
In my research I have that there are some rather obscure registry keys I can look at but I'm not sure if that is the route to go. Does anyone have any suggestions?
@Kev, really like your solution. Thanks for the help.
Using the registry the code would look something like this:
I would be curious if either of these would work in a medium trust environment (although I am working in full trust so it doesn't matter to what I am currently working on).
@komradekatz, your solution below from MSDN for convenience for others looking into this. I do not like this solution because it uses the user agent to determine the version. This is not viable for what I need (I am writing a class library that needs to know whether .NET 3.5 is installed). I also question how reliable this solution may prove to be.
On my machine this outputs:
That is because technically .NET 3.5 is an extension of the 2.0 framework. The quickest way is to include an assembly from .NET 3.5 and see if it breaks.
Is a good assembly that is only included in version 3.5. Also it seems that you are using ASP.NET to run this check, this really limits you because you will be unable to check the file system or the registry running in the protected mode of ASP.NET. Or you can always problematically try loading an assembly from the GAC that should only be in .NET 3.5, however you may run in to problems with permissions again.
This may be one of those times where you ask your self "What am I trying to accomplish?" and see if there are alternative routes.
You could try:
@Nick: Good question, I'll try it in a bit.
Kev
A good resource I found:
http://www.walkernews.net/2008/05/16/how-to-check-net-framework-version-installed/
One option is to detect 4.0 using the version string:
then since 2.0 and 2.5 share a CLR version number, these need to be distenguished by checking the registry. Since those versions are released already, the strings to look for are known.