A few weeks ago I was on the phone to tech support about a problematic server, the first question they asked me was, "Can we have the make and serial number of your product please sir?", "ermm" I replied, I guess I could have taken a look on the box for the information, however this server was 70 miles away from where I was sitting. On a Mac OSX system you can find the serial number using "About My Mac", however on a Windows System this requires a little more effort, but it is possible.

This prompted me to brush off some of my VBS scripting I'd learn at college and come up with a simple solution to this problem. The answer? A script which will pop-up your make and model number as long as you can remote to the device. I've not found a problem with this script on any Windows system yet, this script takes advantage of WMI services from the BIOS. If you want to have a play with VBS scripting I've found Microsoft MSDN a great resource, you can extend this script to display more information, if you wish.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394587(VS.85).aspx

To get the script setup and working on your machine copy and paste the code listed below into a blank text file. Save this rename to something like serverinfo.vbs, then all you will need to do is run this on the device which you need the information from, and you will will recieve a series of popups. I was using this to dump to a text file but I found the popups easier when I need this information quickly, however this script should have everything you need to get you started.

strComputer = "." Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _ & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2") Set colBIOS = objWMIService.ExecQuery _ ("Select * from Win32_BIOS") For each objBIOS in colBIOS Wscript.Echo "Got a pen ready? Make and Serial will follow." Wscript.Echo objBIOS.Manufacturer Wscript.Echo objBIOS.SerialNumber Next