How to Check When your Laptop was Last Used

How to Check When your Laptop was Last Used

You will get to know when your laptop was last used and when was your PC was used first?

The privacy of our devices and equipments are very important to us.The data in your laptop can be more precious than your wallet.

If you share your laptop with someone or you suspect someone know your laptop password or your child use your laptop without your permission at the midnight, then you would definitely want to know if your laptop has been used in your absence or not.

Here, I will highlight the ways of knowing when your laptop or PC was recently used and also show you when your laptop has been used for very first time.

How to tell when your laptop was last used ?

Here are some other great ways to check  your laptop.

- The first thing you need to look up is the ‘Recent Places’.

- Go to ‘Recent places’ icon on the lefthand side.

- Click and see in the subsequent Window below the ‘Date modifies ‘ header. This will let you know what was the time when someone last visited a folder on your PC.

I would also like to recommend a quick search of web-browser history. Although history can be deleted, but less tech-savvy people don’t know about this or they may forget to delete that entries.

You can also check for recently modified files. In Windows 7 check the “Recent Items” selection in the Windows Start menu.

Tech savvy PC users can delete the recent items but the application they are using generate log or error files or changed any file at all on your PC. This will let you know by opening windows explorer, clicking on the C: drive → clicking on search field→ Date Modified. This works for any version of the Windows.

For more evidence, you can check the Windows Logs, these contain a lots of data about what is going on with your laptop.

In Windows 8, Go to Event Viewer. This will take you to Event Viewer Panel→ Select Windows Logs→ 

In Windows XP & Windows 7, Go to Control Panel→ Administrative Tools→ Computer management→ Event Viewer

Go to the Security Log. This will let you know the timings when someone tries to login and logout of your windows account. It shows every time your laptop was last started. Go to the Application Log and go to Date & Time column. It will let you know the time of applications being used.

How to Know when your laptop was first used?

This is little tricky , but you can still have some idea. You can check” when did you first installed software” . Go to Control Panel→ Programs & Features→ Uninstall a Program. Check for dates “installed on” column and just look fo the earliest program installed in your laptop.You can also go to Local Disk (C:) → Windows → and search by date Modified. The oldest file will tell you the date when your laptop was used first. Or check your social profile for the purchase date, in case you have mentioned that.