Use PowerShell to Find Your Computer Serial Number

At times after you have purchased your computer, you might perform a task that requires you to know your computer's serial number. Your serial number helps with certain situations such as calling for tech support, or perhaps your insurance company wants the serial number for a detailed home inventory. Finding your serial number, if you purchased it from a company rather than building it yourself, can typically be done by moving the CPU around until you locate the sticker affixed to it. This can be problematic in that perhaps the CPU is not in a position to be moved around easily, or possibly you have to turn it upside down as you look for the sticker. So how can you locate the serial number for your computer without having to move your machine? The trick is to use PowerShell.

These steps assume that you have PowerShell set to be shown in the secondary Windows Menu. If not, look at this article explaining how to configure PowerShell to be shown.

1. Right-click on the Start button. Windows displays the secondary Windows Start Menu.
2. Choose Windows PowerShell (Admin). (Make sure it is the Admin option, not the Windows PowerShell option without the Admin privileges.) Windows displays the User Account Control asking if you want to allow changes to be made.
3. Click Yes. The dialog box disappears, and the PowerShell Command Prompt window is displayed. The window will say Administrator in the top-left corner.
4. At the command prompt, type the following and then press Enter. You can also copy and paste the command directly into the PowerShell command prompt.

Get-WmiObject win32_bios | select Serialnumber

5. PowerShell displays the serial number. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. A computer's serial number displayed in PowerShell.

6. Close the PowerShell command prompt window.

If you follow these steps and you receive a serial number of "To be filled by O.E.M.", this means your Original Equipment Manufacturer did not save the serial number to the computer's BIOS or UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) firmware.

With this handy PowerShell trick, you can now easily access your computer's serial number when you need it, without needing to move your computer around or rearrange everything at your desk.

 This tip (7702) applies to Windows 10.