Pulling Hardware Serial Number via Visual Basic? - vb.net

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

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

Answer 5

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.