Hey, IT folks… how many times have you needed the service tag off a Dell computer but: a) the original image had been wiped, and the Dell Service Tag applet wasn’t re-installed; or b) you were remotely connected to a machine that didn’t have the applet for whatever reason; or c) there was a gigantic pile of papers, framed pictures, staplers, and other office paraphernalia that made moving the computer a big pain in the ass?
I used to use this trick on a regular basis a few years ago, but forgot about it until yesterday, when I needed the service tag off a Dell I was remotely connected to.
In Windows, open a command-prompt and type
wmic bios get serialnumber
In most flavors of Linux, you can type this at the command-line:
sudo dmidecode -s system-serial-number
Hope this helps!