Blank serial number after inventory

[#1]

Summary

This article will provide details on a Windows agent that doesn?t inventory a serial number of a device.

Synopsis

This article will provide details on a Windows agent that doesn?t inventory a serial number of a device.

Discussion

When the Compliance Import brings in a new inventory, it will check the hostname, domain and serial number to see if this is a new inventory for an existing machine. Obviously, if it sees an existing machine, it just updates. If it's a new machine, a new inventory is seen in the grid.

A difficulty arises when an inventory comes in with a blank serial number (which is really the only unique way of identifying a machine as things like domain, hostname, IP address etc. can all be changed). FNMP sees the machine with the same hostname and domain, it will match the new inventory to the linked asset, but throw the old inventory into the Discarded node as a way of highlighting to the user that it is done, but may require user validation to confirm. After user confirms, the general guideline here is to move the old Discarded inventory to Ignored.


The agent will attempt to grab the serial number from WMI. WMI is basically a Windows internal database holding hardware & software details for the machine.

Just FYI, if you look at a machine with the agent installed, you'll see a file called C:\Program Files\ManageSoft\Tracker\wmitrack.ini. This contains all the classes and properties we attempt to read from WMI. This section which covers the machine's serial number which looks like this:

[Win32_BIOS]
Manufacturer
Version
ReleaseDate
SerialNumber
BiosCharacteristics
Status

Where Win32_BIOS is the class, and the Manufacturer, Version etc., are the properties within this class (this is notated as Win32_BIOS.SerialNumber for example).

Sometimes the machine manufacturers don't populate the serial number in BIOS, so Windows cannot correctly populate WMI and hence the agent reports a blank serial number in inventory leading to the potential confusion in ECM (note: some manufacturers will populate the serial number with a generic value such as '000000', but this has the same effect in FNMP anyway!).

If you're ever in doubt, there a free utility called WMI Explorer which you can run on the machine itself and inspect WMI directly:

http://www.ks-soft.net/hostmon.eng/wmi/index.htm

You don't need to install it, you just run the executable! So, you run WMI Explorer on a machine it will show the Win32_BIOS.SerialNumber which should contain a value, this value is the one that should get passed to FNMP.

Additional Information

Some manufacturers store the serial number in the "Win32_Baseboard" class instead of the standard "Win32_BIOS" class, this can be identified by running the following in the windows command prompt:

"wmic baseboard get serialnumber /value"

If a serial number is returned then a customisation from Professional Services will be required to update the agent and importer to use this value as a fallback from Win32_BIOS.