programmaticall y obtain the hard disk's serial number from VBA?

[Lauren Wilson]

Discovered this interesting comment on MSDN:

"To programmaticall y obtain the hard disk's serial number that the
manufacturer assigns, use the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
Win32_PhysicalM edia (a class) property SerialNumber."

I'm sorry to admit it bit I am really undereducated on how to
incorporate some of the Windows SDK stuff into VBA apps. Anyone know
of some sample code that will allow us to read the C drive hardware
serial number? I'm NOT talking about the serial number assigned to a
drive by the OS, I'm talking about the serial number given by the HD
manufacturer and encoded on the drive's ROM chip.

The WHY of this question is too complicated to go into right now.

Any help or advice will be much appreciated.

Thanks folks,

-- LW

[Lauren Wilson]

Never mind. It appears that Drive 0 is always listed first.

On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:34:03 -0600, Lauren Wilson <no****@nospam. com>
wrote:

Hi David! Thanks for your response.

This works perfectly. However, it naturally returns SNs for ALL of
the HDs on my system. I need a way to return JUST the primary drive
SN (Drive 0). I tried inserting Debug.Print "SN: " & obj.name & ": "
& obj.SerialNumbe r, but the Name property returned only empty
strings.
Is there a way to limit the output to only the SN for Drive 0?

Thanks again.

-- LW.


On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 16:38:48 +1100, "david epsom dot com dot au"
<david@epsomdo tcomdotau> wrote:

In MSDOS it was easy to retrieve standard HD information,
but in Windows, hardware is virtualised, and you can't get
at it.
Windows does now provide a path to an interface for HD
serial numbers, but it is the SMART drive interface and
I don't know what you will get if SMART is turned off,
or if you have SCSI disks, or if you have Serial ATA disks,
etc.

http://vbnet.mvps.org/index.html?code/disk/smartide.htm

manufacturer assigns, use the WMI Win32_PhysicalM edia
property SerialNumber."

I've never seen that work, but go ahead and try it:

'----------
Sub GetPhysicalSeri al()

Dim obj As Object
Dim WMI As Object

Set WMI = GetObject("WinM gmts:")

For Each obj In WMI.InstancesOf ("Win32_Physica lMedia")
Debug.Print "SN: " & obj.SerialNumbe r
Next

End Sub
'-----------

(david)

"Lauren Wilson" <no****@nospam. com> wrote in message
news:rm****** *************** ***********@4ax .com...

Discovered this interesting comment on MSDN:

"To programmaticall y obtain the hard disk's serial number that the
manufacturer assigns, use the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
Win32_PhysicalM edia (a class) property SerialNumber."

I'm sorry to admit it bit I am really undereducated on how to
incorporate some of the Windows SDK stuff into VBA apps. Anyone know
of some sample code that will allow us to read the C drive hardware
serial number? I'm NOT talking about the serial number assigned to a
drive by the OS, I'm talking about the serial number given by the HD
manufacturer and encoded on the drive's ROM chip.

The WHY of this question is too complicated to go into right now.

Any help or advice will be much appreciated.

Thanks folks,

-- LW

[polite person]

On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:34:03 -0600, Lauren Wilson <no****@nospam. com> wrote:

Hi David! Thanks for your response.

This works perfectly. <snip>

Hi
I'm sure all the WMI methods will give the same result but in answer to your worry about whether the
result is really the serial number or whether it is just what the OS thinks it is .. see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ce_drivers.asp
Accessing Device Drivers

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...m_provider.asp
WDM Provider

or http://www.expresscomputeronline.com...chspace1.shtml
for an outside overview of how WMI works.

Draw your own conclusions! Maybe you should read the refs in reverse order.

[Lauren Wilson]

Thanks a lot PP! The last article was VERY helpful.

We have now tested my WMI code on several Windows PCs, all XP or 2000
machines. In every case, the drive ID's returned exactly matched the
drive serial number originally provided by the drive mfg! I don't
know if this will work on EVERY PC. So far, it looks good.

The bottom line for ALL of this is that there is a growing need to
identify a particular PC with absolute certainty. This approach may
not be the final method, but it seems to move in that direction.
On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 06:36:00 GMT, polite person <si*****@ease.c om>
wrote:

On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:34:03 -0600, Lauren Wilson <no****@nospam. com> wrote:

Hi David! Thanks for your response.

This works perfectly. <snip>

Hi
I'm sure all the WMI methods will give the same result but in answer to your worry about whether the
result is really the serial number or whether it is just what the OS thinks it is .. see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ce_drivers.asp
Accessing Device Drivers

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...m_provider.asp
WDM Provider

or http://www.expresscomputeronline.com...chspace1.shtml
for an outside overview of how WMI works.

Draw your own conclusions! Maybe you should read the refs in reverse order.

[david epsom dot com dot au]

> The bottom line for ALL of this is that there is a growing need

identify a particular PC with absolute certainty. This approach
It doesn't identify my PC :~) I get a blank for the serial
number using that method.

(david)

"Lauren Wilson" <no****@nospam. com> wrote in message
news:k4******** *************** *********@4ax.c om... Thanks a lot PP! The last article was VERY helpful.

We have now tested my WMI code on several Windows PCs, all XP or 2000
machines. In every case, the drive ID's returned exactly matched the
drive serial number originally provided by the drive mfg! I don't
know if this will work on EVERY PC. So far, it looks good.

The bottom line for ALL of this is that there is a growing need to
identify a particular PC with absolute certainty. This approach may
not be the final method, but it seems to move in that direction.
On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 06:36:00 GMT, polite person <si*****@ease.c om>
wrote:

On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:34:03 -0600, Lauren Wilson <no****@nospam. com>
wrote:

Hi David! Thanks for your response.

This works perfectly. <snip>

Hi
I'm sure all the WMI methods will give the same result but in answer to
your worry about whether the
result is really the serial number or whether it is just what the OS
thinks it is .. see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ce_drivers.asp
Accessing Device Drivers

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...m_provider.asp
WDM Provider

or http://www.expresscomputeronline.com...chspace1.shtml
for an outside overview of how WMI works.

Draw your own conclusions! Maybe you should read the refs in reverse
order.

[Lauren Wilson]

On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 09:53:34 +1100, "david epsom dot com dot au"
<david@epsomdot comdotau> wrote:

The bottom line for ALL of this is that there is a growing need
identify a particular PC with absolute certainty. This approach
It doesn't identify my PC :~) I get a blank for the serial
number using that method.

Interesting. Mind saying what is your OS, and primary HD brand name?

(david)

"Lauren Wilson" <no****@nospam. com> wrote in message
news:k4******* *************** **********@4ax. com...

Thanks a lot PP! The last article was VERY helpful.

We have now tested my WMI code on several Windows PCs, all XP or 2000
machines. In every case, the drive ID's returned exactly matched the
drive serial number originally provided by the drive mfg! I don't
know if this will work on EVERY PC. So far, it looks good.

The bottom line for ALL of this is that there is a growing need to
identify a particular PC with absolute certainty. This approach may
not be the final method, but it seems to move in that direction.
On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 06:36:00 GMT, polite person <si*****@ease.c om>
wrote:

On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:34:03 -0600, Lauren Wilson <no****@nospam. com>
wrote:

Hi David! Thanks for your response.

This works perfectly. <snip>

Hi
I'm sure all the WMI methods will give the same result but in answer to
your worry about whether the
result is really the serial number or whether it is just what the OS
thinks it is .. see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ce_drivers.asp
Accessing Device Drivers

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...m_provider.asp
WDM Provider

or http://www.expresscomputeronline.com...chspace1.shtml
for an outside overview of how WMI works.

Draw your own conclusions! Maybe you should read the refs in reverse
order.