Zen Inventory will not collect Dell Serial Numbers (service tags)

Question

The 'Serial Number' query will not work on Dell Optiplex systems.
The 'asset tag' query will grab the service tag on older versions of the
Dell BIOS in GX1 and older systems (that did not have an asset tag
field). On newer machines (GX100's - GX260's), I've not been successful
in obtaining the Dell Service Tag at all. Dell says that their DMI is
industry compliant and can't understand why Zenworks will not work. Then
they want to sell me their product. Novell says that their product is DMI
compliant and cannot understand why Dell systems will not report the
serial number. I'm caught in the middle. :--(

Answer 1

Hi,
It is stored in a different place in the BIOS, but this shouldn't be an
issue. Zen simply doesn't seem to be addressing the DMI subclasses
correctly - if it did so it'd have no difficulty at all in finding the
serial number regardless of where the BIOS stores it.
As I've already said twice on different threads, if you access DMI through
WMI using a bog-standard VB script, you can get the serial number every
single time.
If you have VB, try this code:
Private Function StripNulls(OriginalStr As String) As String
' This removes the extra Nulls so String comparisons will work
Do While (InStr(OriginalStr, Chr(0)) > 0)
OriginalStr = Left(OriginalStr, InStr(OriginalStr, Chr(0)) - 1)
Loop
Do While (Right(OriginalStr, 1) = " ")
OriginalStr = Left(OriginalStr, Len(OriginalStr) - 1)
Loop
StripNulls = OriginalStr
End Function
Set WMI = GetObject("WinMgmts:")
Set objs = WMI.InstancesOf("Win32_ComputerSystemProduct")
For Each obj In objs
MyVendor = obj.Vendor
MyModel = StripNulls(obj.Name)
Next
Set objs = WMI.InstancesOf("Win32_SystemEnclosure")
For Each obj In objs
MySerial = obj.SerialNumber
Next
MsgBox (MyVendor & " " & MyModel & " Serial: " & MySerial)
Shaun, if there is a patch for this I'd be interested. We've got an audit
coming up and it's CRITICAL we can address this requirement.
"Shaun Pond" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]..
> AIUI, dell stores their information in different places for different
> models, maybe that's it. I'd suggest waiting until the new patch is
> released (hopefully today) and trying with that. If that fails, come
> back to me, and we'll see about getting a defect raised.
>
> --
>
> Shaun Pond
> Novell Support Connection SysOp
>