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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-11T03:44:57+00:00

I’m trying to make a version of a Symantec Ghost boot disk that will

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I’m trying to make a version of a Symantec Ghost boot disk that will automatically check the system model number, and choose which NIC driver is needed for that model. I have everything working except for getting the actual model #. I need to be able to get it even if the hard drive has been completely wiped, since this is running from a dos boot disk.

I’ve tried several commands – wmic, systeminfo – all of which work fine within windows, but I need one that can run in dos mode, and apparently these can’t.

Any ideas on utilities and/or commands that could help me out?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You may be able to write a small piece of code and call the BIOS API directly.

    See http://www.cs.ubbcluj.ro/~forest/HtmlFolder/AC/NG/ng897c4.html for an (ancient) example:

    INT 15h,  C0h (192)      Return System Configuration                     many

    Reports the machine model number, sub-model number, BIOS revision
    level, and other hardware-specific attributes.

       On entry:      AH         C0h

       Returns:       Carry      Set if error, else cleared
                      AH         0
                      ES:BX      Pointer to a System Descriptor Table

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------

       Notes:         This service is not available for the PC, PCjr, XT
                      dated 11/08/82, and the AT dated 1/10/84. Use the
                      return state of AH to determine if the service is
                      returning valid information.

  System Descriptor Table

          Description              Length (byte)      Value
          Table length                   1              8
          System model number            1              ?
          Sub-model number               1              ?
          Bios Revision level            1              ?
          Feature Information            1              ?
          Reserved                       4              0

    This is the wikipedia list of all calls, and I’m pretty sure there will be a function in a compiler of choice (e.g Turbo C etc) that does this too.

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