Access Motherboard information without using WMI

Question

I need to access motheroard identification (serial, manufacture, etc) in my application on multiple processes. I have been able to successfully query this using WMI, but I'm looking for an alternative.

If you care to know situation:

I have some application behavior that is different depending on the hardware configuration, or if a particular environment variable is set (for testing purposes).

bool IsVideoCardDisplay = ( getenv("Z_VI_DISPLAY") || !QueryWmiForSpecialBoard() ) ? false : true;

When the environment variable is set the WMI query isn't necessary--the application runs fine. However, when the environment variable is not present some of the components of my app fail to launch when is necessary to make the the WMI queries. I suspect that there may be some side effects of the WMI calls (which only a maximum of happen once per processes. This is why I'm seeking an alternative way.

Answer 1

Apparently there is no way to do this, which is unfortunate.

Answer 2

In Vista+ you can use GetSystemFirmwareTable API to access SMBIOS tables and parse them out to obtain [possibly available] serial numbers and other identification strings and values.

In particular you can access motherboard data, including vendor and S/N:

            Intel Corporation
            DZ77BH-55K
            AAG39018-400
            BQBH206600DT

Answer 3

That information is provided by the CPUID instruction. The following link provides you with a program that uses this instruction to expose the results of executing the instruction.

cpuid GNU program