Get the Serial Number, Manufacturer, and Model from Windows 2008 64-Bit Systems

While running some reports on server hardware I realized that some of the servers were missing the serial, manufacturer, and model information. I needed this information for inventory forwarding and system model counts. After identifying the systems I realized that all of these systems were Windows 2008 64Bit.

I called Altiris and they acknowledged that this is a know issue and is not likely to be resolved until NS 7.0. Well I need this data in the reports today not months down the road.

The Problem

The issue appears to be in the aexsnplus.exe uses 16bit code and the 16bit subsystem is removed from Windows 2008 64bit, so the aexsnplus.exe ends failing to run.

The Solution

Since the information we're looking for is available in a couple of WMI classes (Win32_ComputerSystem & Win32_BIOS), I figured I could easily create a built in custom inventory task to get the data, but the stars did not appear to align, and still I returned invalid data.

Not letting this minor setback get in the way of inventory, I ended up creating a quick and dirty vbscript that would generate the NSI file.

Then I created a new hardware inventory ini file replace the line:

aexsnplus.exe /output xml

With:

cscript getsn.vbs

After the new ini file was created, and the vbscript placed in the following directory:

\\YourNSserver\NSCap\Bin\Win32\X86\Inventory Solution 

I created a new program in the Inventory Agent Package referencing my new ini file.

AeXInvSoln.exe /s AEXINVHWSN.ini

Then created a new Inventory Task for the new program targeting only the Windows 2008 64 bit systems and let her rip.

Outcome:

I now have my Serial Number, Model & Manufacturer available for all my Windows 2008 64bit systems. I have attached the vbscript and ini file used to make this possible.