Question

The normal way to get the windows serial number is WMI.

 ManagementObjectSearcher mos = new ManagementObjectSearcher('Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem');  // ...  // Select number from managementobject mo['SerialNumber'] 

I don’t want to use WMI because the compact framework dosn’t support it. The assembly must work on the desktop and the compact framework side so i can’t add the reference.

How can i get the same result using a pinvoke call?

Answer 1

You’ll need to invoke KernelIOControl for WindowsCE.

Here’s the c++ code, don’t have the time to convert it to c#

#include <WINIOCTL.H>  extern 'C' __declspec(dllimport)  BOOL KernelIoControl( DWORD dwIoControlCode, LPVOID lpInBuf, DWORD nInBufSize, LPVOID lpOutBuf, DWORD nOutBufSize, LPDWORD lpBytesReturned );  #define IOCTL_HAL_GET_DEVICEID CTL_CODE(FILE_DEVICE_HAL, 21, METHOD_BUFFERED, FILE_ANY_ACCESS)   CString GetSerialNumberFromKernelIoControl() {      DWORD dwOutBytes;      const int nBuffSize = 4096;      byte arrOutBuff[nBuffSize];      BOOL bRes = ::KernelIoControl(IOCTL_HAL_GET_DEVICEID, 0, 0, arrOutBuff, nBuffSize, &dwOutBytes);      if (bRes) { CString strDeviceInfo; for (unsigned int i = 0; i<dwOutBytes; i++) {          CString strNextChar; strNextChar.Format(TEXT('%02X'), arrOutBuff[i]); strDeviceInfo += strNextChar;      }      CString strDeviceId = strDeviceInfo.Mid(40,2) + strDeviceInfo.Mid(45,9) + strDeviceInfo.Mid(70,6);      return strDeviceId;      } else {          return _T('');      }  }  

Edit: (pinvoke kernelIOControl c#)

[DllImport('coredll.dll')]     public static extern bool KernelIoControl(long dwIoControlCode, IntPtr lpInBuff, long dwInBuffSize, IntPtr lpOutBuff, long dwOutBuffSize, IntPtr lpBytesReturned);