There’s plenty of times you can need the serial number (aka Service Tag) from a Dell machine, but not be able to physically look at the label. It’s a server in a datacenter, it’s your laptop and it’s on a dock, etc, etc. Fortunately, there are easy commands to get the serial number right from the command line in both Windows and Linux.
Windows:
From a command prompt, type:
wmic bios get serialnumber
Linux (Ubuntu and others):
From a terminal, type:
sudo dmidecode -s system-serial-number
Comments are welcome, as always.
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Steve Dolphin
April 28, 2011 at 4:32 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Helpful post, shame it doesn’t work in virtualised environments though (I never really expected it to, but I tried anyway!)
Gee
November 5, 2012 at 3:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Worked for me, thanks.
Carla
February 14, 2013 at 5:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I have only used command prompts once, so perhaps I am doing something wrong. When I go to the promot/dos screen, I see “C:\users\Carla>” I entered “wmic bios get serialnumber” and nothing showed up. Is it a different command for Windows 7?
Thanks!
Carla
February 14, 2013 at 5:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oops! It actually did work! I must have made a typo. Thanks so much!!!
Brianna
June 6, 2013 at 12:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thank you SO SO SO SO much for this! I can’t make out my service tag info because the sticker is worn and the technicians acted like there was no other way for me to find the information. Thanks again for saving me time and annoyance.
Jeff
June 14, 2013 at 6:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ironically Mike, I needed this info just now. Google search brought it up as like the 4th result.
Eugene Lui
June 14, 2013 at 1:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
When run wmic bios serialnumber, I got an error saying ‘PWhere’ expression for the alias underfined. What should I do? Thanks.
Getting your Dell Service Tag number from the command line in Ubuntu Linux » Mike Beach
March 25, 2011 at 5:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[...] How to get your Dell service tag from the command line in Windows and Linux. [...]