Pulling Hardware Serial Number via Visual Basic?

Question

I am writing an application in Visual Basic that pulls basic information about the computer and outputs the data onto a form. Currently, I am trying to pull the serial number for the machine I would be using. For example, pulling a serial number of a laptop from the BIOS. I have looked around the internet and haven't really found how to do this in Visual Basic without using WMI or C. Is there a way to do this in Visual Basic?

Below is what I have currently in the form, so you can get an idea of what I am trying to do:

        TextBoxComputerName.Text = Environment.MachineName
        TextBoxOSVersion.Text = System.Environment.OSVersion.ToString
        TextBoxOSFullName.Text = My.Computer.Info.OSFullName
        TextBoxCurrentUser.Text = System.Environment.UserName
        TextBox64Bit.Text = System.Environment.Is64BitOperatingSystem
        TextBoxSystemDirectory.Text = System.Environment.SystemDirectory
        TextBoxDomain.Text = System.Environment.UserDomainName
        ' CHECK SERIAL NUMBER HERE.

Thank you all so much!

Answer 1

This will work for you just great! First add reference to System.Management and then make sure to import it at the top of your class as well. I did this on a form load event, but you can put it anywhere...

  Imports System.Management

  Dim q As New SelectQuery("Win32_bios")
  Dim search As New ManagementObjectSearcher(q)
  Dim info As New ManagementObject

  For Each info In search.Get
    MessageBox.Show("Serial Number: " & info("serialnumber").ToString & vbNewLine & vbNewLine & "Bios Version: " & info("version").ToString)
  Next

You can declare a string first if you would like and then set it to: info("serialnumber").ToString and the set that to you txtSerial.Text = your declared string

Here is what I get...

Answer 2

This is VBScript but should be pastable into VB6.

You do know this field is blank on many computers?

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
    & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_BIOS")

For Each objItem in colItems
    msgbox objItem.SerialNumber
Next

From a command prompt (but I don't think home editions get the console program wmic)

wmic bios get /format:list

or

wmic bios get serialnumber /format:list

Answer 3

Try to use Treek's Licecnsing Library. It has class for generating hardware serial.

http://msdn.treekslicensinglibrary.com/html/f2bfa10c-d5d9-25ac-39c2-46e2393c0fbe.htm

Answer 4

I found a way to get to this a bit backwards in VBA, using the FileSystemObject. You will need to set a reference to the Windows Scripting Runtime.

Option Explicit

Public Sub GetHDSerial()

    Dim objFSO          As FileSystemObject
    Dim objFolder       As Folder

    Dim strComputer     As String

    strComputer = "myComputer"
    Set objFSO = New FileSystemObject
    Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder("\\" & strComputer & "\c$")
    Debug.Print Hex(objFolder.Drive.SerialNumber)

    Set objFSO = Nothing
    Set objFolder = Nothing

End Sub

This does not account for multiple physical drives, which wasn't a problem in my environment.

Answer 5

Here is a class that will return: *) Computer Name *) Assembly Name *) Login User Name *) Serial No

Imports System.Management

''' ''' Provides the Methods and Properties to retrieve and make available to the ''' Application the: ''' *) Computer Name ''' *) Assembly Name ''' *) Login User Name ''' *) PC Serial Number '''
''' Public Class clsGetComputerInformation Private ReadOnly mstrClsTitle As String = "clsGetComputerInformation"

Public ReadOnly Property pstrComputerName() As String
    Get
        Return Environment.MachineName
    End Get
End Property

Public ReadOnly Property pstrUserName() As String
    Get
        Return System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent.Name
    End Get
End Property

Public ReadOnly Property pstrAssemblyName() As String
    Get
        Return My.Application.Info.AssemblyName
    End Get
End Property


Public Function pstrSystemSerialNumber() As String
    Dim query As New SelectQuery("Win32_bios")
    Dim search As New ManagementObjectSearcher(query)
    Dim info As ManagementObject
    Dim lstrSerialNo As String = ""

    For Each info In search.Get()
        lstrSerialNo = info("SerialNumber").ToString()
    Next
    Return lstrSerialNo
End Function

End Class