Getting a computer unique string

[SmOke_N]

i not sure....but isn't the windows product id unique?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProductId

Would that not be for only 9x and ME? ^^

[JSThePatriot]

Would that not be for only 9x and ME? ^^

I just checked my XP installation, and I have the key there, but it is not with my actual product id. It is some sort of other ID, not sure if it is unique or not.

JS

[herewasplato]

i not sure....but isn't the windows product id unique?

They are not unique when the builds are from a corporate license.

Edit: My bad, I confused this with product key and when I checked 2 systems built from a corp CD - only one digit was different on the ProductID and it was not on either end - I just missed the compare.

ProductId seems to be the number Microsoft assigned to you when you registered Windows...

Edited January 24, 2006 by herewasplato

[SmOke_N]

I double checked, I also have it there... in both Windows / WindowsNT ... I Checked both my corporate XP Pros SP2's and My wifes Home Edition.

Edit:

The 2 Corp's were from the same CD and they are in fact different on both PC's under the ProductID.

Edited January 23, 2006 by SmOke_N

[ChrisL]

They are not unique when the builds are from a corporate license.

Or ghosted

[herewasplato]

...The 2 Corp's were from the same CD and they are in fact different...

I confused ProductID with Product Key and when I checked 2 systems built from a corp CD - only one digit was different on the ProductID and it was not on either end - I just missed the compare.

According to a few sites, ProductId seems to be the number Microsoft assigned to you when you registered Windows...

Edited January 24, 2006 by herewasplato

[ACalcutt]

it is the number in the "registed to" section of system properties

i've never registered my windows, so i dont think thats it

[JSThePatriot]

it is the number in the "registed to" section of system properties

i've never registered my windows, so i dont think thats it

Maybe by register he means "Activate".

Just a thought,

JS

[herewasplato]

Maybe by register he means "Activate".

I had that debate in my head - but I used the term that I found on several sites when researching that registry key.

Google This:

"not to be confused with ProductId which is the number Microsoft assigned to you when you registered Windows"

I know that it could be wrong and copied over and over - but I just used the term that I found.

I was also told that the corp XP CD that I make my builds from does not require activation. That could be wrong or it could be that activation is done without user intervention or....

but - back to the topic of this thread - is that number truely unique?

[JSThePatriot]

I had that debate in my head - but I used the term that I found on several sites when researching that registry key.

Google This:

"not to be confused with ProductId which is the number Microsoft assigned to you when you registered Windows"

I know that it could be wrong and copied over and over - but I just used the term that I found.

I was also told that the corp XP CD that I make my builds from does not require activation. That could be wrong or it could be that activation is done without user intervention or....

but - back to the topic of this thread - is that number truely unique?

To my knowledge... Corporate accounts do not require activation. I didnt think about that before I made my post. I understand your use of the terms.

JS

[ACalcutt]

Well i think registered may be the correct term (since its in registration information in system properties) but i dont think you have to physically register to get the number, its their automatically.

And no...you dont need to activate a XP corporate, but micorsoft still tracks you when you go to windows update, so their must be a uniqe key(at least in windows XP) unless they track your GUID :-/

[FiNAlzFiNAle]

Hi nfwu,

I'd like to ask whether the function _UniqueWoodID2 generates a unique ID of fixed length, even when run on other computers?

Also, what does the shortening value variable do? According to the the UDF you posted here, it is supposed to shorten the ID that is generated.

If I use a small number, it generates a long string, and if I use a large number, it will generate a short string.

Thanks

[cmtuggl]

Not sure what is being checked to validate your windows install for windows updates (I assume GUID, listed below that I didn't try)...but i can say this, the Product ID mentioned in this thread (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\productid) is most definately NOT unique. OEM installs are the problem, not corporate licenses. I have done a live sampling of thousands machines to see if I could use this. To give an example, I just looked at a data set of approximately 4000 machines from a US consumer market. There were only about 400 unique product ids. Most all duplicates had "OEM" in the product id itself.

Woods Unique ID (tried #2) also does not seem to be 100% unique (as he mentions), even in the 4000 unit sample. I saw approximately 99.1% success rate.

Other ID's I looked in to:

UUID

LANGUAGE USED: AUTO IT WMI QUERY

**This one had 3288 unique out of 4000

GUID

NOTES: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcen...05/hey0221.mspx

LANGUAGE USED: VBS

**Didn't try this

MS Cryptography GUID

hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\cryptography\GUID

**Not even close to unique. Not quite as bad as product id though.

Basically the simplest answer is Mac Address for the internet connected NIC will give you a unique id. To do this you use WMI to call Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration WHERE IPEnabled=True. I only had 6 records of duplicate MAC addresses making it work for 99.8% of the cases so far. This is also explained if the unit has more than one NIC or the NIC gets replaced.

Edited April 8, 2008 by cmtuggl

[rudi]

Buffo, your solution adopting timestamps is ingenious and I can see it being quite effective.

For the customers I support this would be useless: All the PCs are somewhat clones, in some networks all of them, so these timestamps will be identical.

And the timestamp taken from the user profile is not machine, but user related, isn't it?

Regards, Rudi.

[everseeker]

For the customers I support this would be useless: All the PCs are somewhat clones, in some networks all of them, so these timestamps will be identical.

And the timestamp taken from the user profile is not machine, but user related, isn't it?

Regards, Rudi.

You DO realize how old the post is that you replied to, don't you? (almost 2.5 YEARS ago)

Edited April 8, 2008 by everseeker

[rudi]

Hi.

I only had 6 records of duplicate MAC addresses making it work for 99.8% of the cases so far.

What vendor did these duplicate MACs come from?

AFAIK the MAC address space definitely is *NOT* running short. Duplicate MAC addresses are not allowed by specification. Well, I didn't check large numbers of PCs, but MAC addesses somehow have a builtin checksum rule [1] and so far I've never seen duplicate mac addresses: They should cause switching problems when in the same LAN, as duplicate MAC addresses should mess up the switch' ARP table. (some kind of Hardware ARP spoofing...)

Regards, Rudi.

[1] in the early 1990 "heretic" was a nice IPX LAN game for multiplayer sessions. The player with the lowest MAC address value got the dark green dress -- that one worst to be recognized. Well, I *ALWAYS* was the green warrior , regardless of the PC I was sitting at, but the lowest MAC I could use these days was far above 00:00:00:00:00:01, the first possible values in the row were invalid MACs and so this MAC spoofing was refused by the NIC's driver.

Edited April 8, 2008 by rudi

[cmtuggl]

What vendor did these duplicate MACs come from?

I did not document the NIC vendor. : /

[SmOke_N]

I did not document the NIC vendor. : /

Are you guys suggesting that a cloned virtual OS has a unique MAC address from the original virtual environment it was cloned from?

News to me if so... I was under the impression that the UUID was the only unique option from virtual environment to virtual environment, and even that could be spoofed back to the original.

[Wilenty]

If @OSArch='x86' Then
    $reg='HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE'
Else
    $reg='HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE64'
EndIf
$UUID=RegRead($reg & '\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography', 'MachineGuid')
MsgBox(0,'Machine GUID','{' & $UUID & '}')