Asset ID field shows 0000000

[Dannymagicus]

I'm currently running v3.1T and everything is running great apart from various PC's and laptop's do not appear to be showing the correct Asset ID's (serial number). The Asset ID field simply shows 0000000.  

The affected PC's tend to be Compaq Ipaq PC's and Toshiba Laptops and did need the SMBIOS entry to show their model and manufacturer however unfortunately it didn't enable the Serial Numbers to be shown.

Is there any way this information can be obtained by Systemhound via a Registry entry or other means? or is it a peculiarity of these specific Machines, as currently I have about 60 machines that are currently reporting 0000000 as their Serial number - and this is hindering any audits that are done.  

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Nish]

Unfortunately, this is the description as reported by the BIOS on the machine. It may be worth trying to enter the information directly into the BIOS yourself, or the manufacturer may have a utility to do this.

You may also want to upgrade to v4 as changes have been made to the reporting of this field and it may well be that v4 will report it, if it actually is available in the BIOS. You can download the evaluation copy, install the server on a spare machine, install a couple of clients to machines which already have the 3.1 clients; they will then report to the new server upon installation. Once you've tested, you can re-install the 3.1 clients from the main server. Post back here if v4 resolves this issue for you.

[Dannymagicus]

Hi Nish,

Cheers for the reply and the advice.

I have downloaded v4 and installed this on my laptop and, whilst i haven't installed it to all clients (as theres about 60 odd), the ones that i have installed it to are reporting the Asset ID correctly.  As soon as i go back to to v3.1 i get 00000. This would therefore indicate that the changes made to v4 are pulling this information in.

The problem that i have is that the PC's and laptop's are located all over the Country so its going to be difficult obtaining this information. If it would be possible for v3.1 to report it then it does make things a great deal easier for me and for any audits - hence the request. If there is no other way (registry hack or otherwise) to obtain this information, aside from upgrading to v4, then upgrading is something that might have to be considered.


Update

Tosh Tecra's, P4000's & Sat Pro 6000 series seem to report the Asset ID in v4 however this is incorrect and does not match up with the serial of the laptop - all others appear to be fine.

[Nish]

3.1 won't be able to report it. Won't your pc's / laptops check into your network at regular intervals? In which case, the systemhound clients will report to the server at some point...

[Dannymagicus]

Yes, the off-site Laptops and PC's do report into the server currently at regular intervals (every day - across our Network or VPN), hence being able to deduce that the supposed Serial number of the affected machines is 000000.

All i meant however was that if i had to input the data manually into the BIOS of these PC's then this would be problematic with them being off-site,therefore i didn't know if there was some way of making V3.1 report this field correctly seeing as v4 seems to.

(you seem to have answered this though by saying that v3.1 won't be able to do it)

Many Thanx

[Nish]

yes, as a minimum, upgrade to v4 to sort out the 000000 asset id issue