Getting Your PC's Serial Number Without a Reboot

If you're in my line of work and have to setup or reconfigure machines on a regular basis, it helps to have a tool to help keep your hardware inventory.  One item on my inventory that I need to update any time I work on a computer is the Serial Number of the machine.  This number helps me keep track of who is on what machine and when service is needed, it's usually the first number you look for.

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In the past, I've had to rely on external stickers on the pcs themselves or rebooting the computer and getting the serial number.  Some systems will provide the number in certain system software.  It's great that we can find it in all these places, but if you have to remember where to look just to get to the number, it's a hassle in itself.

A couple of years ago, I discovered a command line that will shoe just the serial number:

wmic bios get serialnumber

This has saved me much head scratching and looking for online tips every time I need it.  I've used it enough now that I have memorized the command and its just a few click away!  I've primarily used this on Dell computers and it has worked on a few other brands as well.  It will work on Windows XP, 7 and 8.

Many of you sysadmins already know this command, if you didn't, I hope this will help you save some head scratching.

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Change Drive Letter of Media Card Readers

I've had problems renaming the drive letter on built-in media card readers on some computers. Usually, it's very easy to change a drive letter. Just open the Disk Management tool in windows and choose the device and change the letter.

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Step by step instructions:

Right click Computer - Manage - Storage - Disk Management - Right click on the drive and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths.

In this instance, I could not do so. So I did a search for cannot change drive letter of sd card reader and found my answer here.

To make it short: to Change drive letter designation on internal SD card reader you need to rename the following registry key.

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
• Right-click "\DosDevices\D:", and then click Rename
• Rename it to \DosDevices\S: - or whatever letter you want
• Reboot pc and it's set

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USB to Ethernet Print Server

I have a very old printer, it's over 10 years old but still works very well and I still have a lot of spare ink cartridges for it.  Instead of letting it go to waste or throwing it away, I use it to print drafts and exam prep work for the kids.  Yesterday I had a little dilemma, the printer won't work on my Windows 8 laptop.  There are no drivers available for this printer on Windows 8, and it was not even picked up by Windows as a device.

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I did have an old HP print server, which has been sitting around without use.  The wonderful thing about this print server is simple to use.  I plugged my decade old printer into the print server (USB) and plug the printer into my router.  Now I can add the printer just like any network printer from Windows 8.

In 5 minutes I had put the old printer back to use, no additional software needed.  The device uses very little power and takes up very little space.  Another benefit - the device can be used on any USB printer. The model I use is old but price has stayed high, but I found several others on Amazon that would do the same job. (Amazon associate links)



What would you have done?  Share your thoughts and solutions in the comments.

For additional links to tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way, contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.