Question

So a school who contracts labor from where I work just keeps ordering new computers and we have to maintain a database of serial numbers to asset tags as well as rename the computers to reflect their asset tag. I have the SN’s and AT’s associated in a CSV file what I would like to do is write a c# application that gets the serial number from the computer its running on then query the server for its name. Does anyone know a way to do this (The stuff I’ve read hints it will be through system.management but I’m not finding anymore). unfortunately I wont have access to one of the target computers or even one of the same brand until I need it to work.

So is there any discrepancies between brands as to where they put their serial numbers?

Answer 1

Try the SerialNumber property of the Win32_BaseBoard WMI object:

using System.Management;

ManagementObjectSearcher searcher =
    new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT Product, SerialNumber FROM Win32_BaseBoard");

ManagementObjectCollection information = searcher.Get();
foreach (ManagementObject obj in information)
{
    foreach (PropertyData data in obj.Properties)
        Console.WriteLine("{0} = {1}", data.Name, data.Value);
    Console.WriteLine();
}

searcher.Dispose();

Source: Retrieving Motherboard Serial Number using WMI

Of course, this only works on Windows platform.