Some multiplayer games that implement the PunkBuster anti cheat system get cheaters off the server using hardware bans. It used to ban the hard disk serial number but no longer does that since there are ways to spoof and temporarily change the so-called hardcoded serial number. So now theyâve started to ban the CD-Key. Other than that, some licensing system also uses the hard disk serial number to generate a unique hardware ID which is then used to generate an external license file to activate the software.
Driver version through hardware/software inventory. I have been doing some digging and can't seem to figure out a good way to get a drivers version through SCCM. Just as an example I would like to get a report of all of our SCSI adapters with driver version. I found the information contained in the.inf file for the driver, but would rather.
In this Article: Finding Hardware IDs Using Hardware IDs to Find Drivers Community Q&A References If you have hardware in your computer that is not functioning properly and you're not sure what it is or who made it, you can use the device's Hardware ID to identify it. The process to figure out the device is to look at the device, in device manager->Properties->Details->Hardware IDs. I then lookup the info in an online repository. Like the PCI Database or Windows Update to find the actual driver from the vendor. This worksbut it could be better. Using PowerShell. Johan Arwidmark is a well-respected SCCM God. Inventorying and Reporting on driver information with ConfigMgr June 4, 2016 58 comments In regards to drivers and BIOS updates on workstations in your environment, a lot of organizations have held the mindset for many years that â If it ainât broke, donât fix it! In this Article: Finding Hardware IDs Using Hardware IDs to Find Drivers Community Q&A References. If you have hardware in your computer that is not functioning properly and you're not sure what it is or who made it, you can use the device's Hardware ID to identify it. An easy way to find a particular driver is by searching the web using the hardware ID. In Device Manager, right-click the hardware device, then click Properties. Select the Details tab, click in the Property list box then choose Hardware Ids. In the Value box, choose the short value, right click it then click Copy.
If you do a simple search in Google, youâll find tons of information about to change your hard disk volume serial number, but not the real hard disk serial number that is hard coded into the hardware. Some people said that it is impossible to change it, but we will show you that there are ways to change both volume and hard coded serial numbers for your hard disk.
A simple way to find your current hard disk volume serial number is to open a command prompt (Win key+R and type cmd) and then type dir. The second line shows your volume serial number for the system C partition. Type dir [driveletter:] and it will show a different serial number even if the volume is on the same physical hard drive. The volume serial number changes every time you format the partition and Windows also uses this value during activation so you canât simply move your install from one partition to another. If your Windows has been activated using a product key from a sticker it will probably ask for the key again after a reboot and will need reactivating if you change the volume serial number on the system drive.
Hardware Spoofer Download![]()
1. Hard Disk Serial Number Changer
There are a few free tools around capable of changing the volume serial number and one of them is called Hard Disk Serial Number Changer. The name is a bit misleading though as it doesnât actually change the hard disk serial number but the volume serial number which is different. It works on just about any Windows operating system from 98 onward and is a standalone portable executable but does need to be run as administrator on Vista and 7.
Usage is pretty straightforward and you simply choose your drive from the drop down box, enter the new serial number and click the Change button. Do note the serial number format as mentioned in the window is made up of 8 hex characters from 0-9 and A-F split by a â-â into two groups of 4. You will then need to reboot to commit the changes.
Download Hard Disk Serial Number Changer
2. VolumeID
Another useful tool to change the volume serial number is by Sysinternals called VolumeID. This tool is only usable from the command line so wonât be as quick and easy to use for some people as Hard Disk Serial Number Changer. The command line usage to change the ID of a drive volume/partition is:
volumeid [driveletter:] xxxx-xxxx
The format is again 4 hex characters, a â-â followed by another 4 hex characters. You should shut down all your running applications before using this tool and will need to reboot immediately after the changes if they are being made on an NTFS partition.
Download Sysinternals VolumeID
The tools above are fine for changing the serial number of a volume/partition but trying to change the serial number of the actual hard drive itself is a whole different story. These are hard coded into the hard drive itself and cannot simply be edited or altered using a piece of software. There are however, several tools around that can spoof the hard driveâs built in serial number temporarily which can hopefully fool whatever software you are trying to get round. Unfortunately a lot of these tools arenât free and some are even approaching $100 to buy.
3. PB DownForce
There is a free tool thatâs been around for quite a while called PB DownForce which is able to temporarily spoof your hard driveâs static serial number into a different random or seeded number. There is also an option to set your own predefined serial number although we were unable to get that function to work during testing. To use the program in itâs simplest form, all you have to do is start it up and click on the Start spoofing button. Make sure to run PB DownForce as administrator.
The Advanced options button shows the 3 different types of spoofing to choose, although as mentioned we couldnât get method 3 to work as intended and it just showed a serial full of a single number. You can easily use the Stop Spoofing button and try another random number. Perform test will quickly tell what drive model name and serial has been given. The image below shows a new serial after using PB DownForce to change a hard disk serial number in the PC Wizard hardware information tool. Do note that some tools such as Speccy will still show the original serial number for the drive because they gather their data in another way, HWInfo does something different again and will show the spoofed drive as another completely new hard drive in its list.
PB DownForce was tested and worked on Windows XP and Windows 7 32-bit although it still was quite random to which machines worked and which showed no change or produced an error. 64-bit Windows is not supported in any free hard drive spoofing tools we came across. The spoofed serial will return to normal after a reboot.
Download PB DownForce
There are several more hard disk serial number Spoofing tools on page 2.
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You might also like:4 Ways to Change Windows System Restore Disk Space Usage5 Tools To Get An On Screen Volume Level Indicator3 Methods to Spoof Fake File Extensions in Windows11 Tools to Find out Information About Your Computerâs Hardware4 Tools To Auto Adjust System Volume At Specific Times
hello raymond ! Reply
the Chameleon site not workinâ :(
iNfeRnO2 years ago
Chameleon appears to be dead. I guess none of these tools that are currently available work for newer operating systems, sadly.
Reply
i got bluescreen . everytime i shutdown pc. when using pbdownforce
Reply
chuje-muje-dzikie-wÄże7 months ago
because is wirus XD
Reply
Jetzt helfe ich mir selbst vw polo 6n youtube. About PB DownForce. Reply
It is mentioned that It will spoof your hard driveâs serial number but temporarly. So youâll need to spoof your hard driveâs serial every time you open the game and connect to that certain server youâre banned in order not to get tracked?
Chowdhury Adnan Rahman4 years ago
Hello,
PB Down Force just made my dayâ¦.Thanks a lotâ¦.You are awesome.
Reply
Iâm trying to use PBdownforce on win 7 64 but Iâm getting error: âcommuniction failedâ. Any help on this ? Any other tool to spoof hdd serial on win 7 64 ?
Reply
HAL9000 Author5 years ago
As stated in the article PBDownforce doesnât work on 64-bit Windows, we couldnât find any free tools that do.
Reply
PBdownforce asking for password to run.
Reply
HAL9000 Author4 years ago
Itâs written clearly on the download page.
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Another utility which allows changing of a volume serial number is âMiniTool Partition Wizardâ, whatâs more it changes the whole 32 bit long serial number, not only the last 16 visible bits (8 characters).
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Tom5 years ago
Sorry, my mistake â MiniTool reports Volume ID as a 8 byte (16 characters/64 bit) value, while other programs report only 4 bytes (8 characters/32 bits). Donât know what is the leading 32 bits, but the last 32 bits is the same as reported by VOL utility.
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hello! PB downforce is very useful for me but can you please tell me how to use my own serials and macs? I mean⦠what is the standard format? because I fill the fields with original and new serial and it doesnt work. Thank you very much!
Reply
Mikan8 years ago
Thank you very much for the info, I need to change my hardware idâ¦.
Reply
Hey
I was struggling to change the volume id but by the help of
Hard Disk Serial Number Changer i was able to change it easily
Thank you ^_^
Reply
eabbas9 years ago
Hello. Reply
Thank you for this tip that is very good. bravo. I enjoyed of this program.
COOL!!!
Reply
Joe10 years ago
Well, I have been searching for that for a long time. So detailed and you provided a good research you did yourself. lol
I am downloading the PB gui program, hopefully it will work. Thanks
Reply
Master , Genius Reply
thanks to you I think I could find a way to temporary fix the problem with the local ban in Counter Strike using Pbdownforce. thanks!
123vso10 years ago
very good one.you changed my view. thanks
Reply
very interesting
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Raitokun10 years ago
Thank you for this great tip ;)
Reply
That was a very interesting read, you are simply awesome
Reply
Michael C.10 years ago
Thanks! You can try typing âvolâ instead of âdirâ to see your volume label or serial number
Reply
I always enjoyed reading your articlesâ¦!
Reply
shahrukh1 year ago
Hi, I need a tool to change my hdd serial no. without restarting my pc, Is there any tool avalable for this. If yes please share. Thnaks
Reply
awesome article !
Reply
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Active2 years, 6 months ago
Os:REDHAT LINUX Linux manage: 2.6.18.8-1 #
Is this possible to read MAC address form NIC directly ? I have below code but it just read from above layer but not the card itself !!!
I'm trying to figure out how to find the original MAC address of an ethernet NIC on my linux box. I understand how to find the current MAC address using ifconfig, but if the address has been changed, say by using
'ifconfig eth0 hw ether uu:vv:ww:yy:xx:zz' ,or I set 'permanent' it using vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 .this file..I can successfully UP it in REBOOT also. how do I find the original? There must be a way to find it, because it is still burned permanently into the card, but I can't find a tool to read the burned in address.is there any utility for it or command for it?I suppose to write C code for it. but don't know how to do this in above case.
** below code gives my current MAC but not original MAC
Jatin Bodarya
Jatin BodaryaJatin Bodarya
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6 Answers
Certainly in ethtool 3.1 you can just print the address:ethtool -P|--show-permaddr DEVNAME Show permanent hardware address
e.g.
Permanent address: 94:de:80:6a:21:25
Jason MorganJason Morgan
Try
cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address or cat /sys/class/net/em1/address if using Fedora. It should work.
The original answer is here: Notes of a Systems Admin
What Is Hardware Idtver3305tver3305
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The only way to find the original MAC address is to use the same method the network card driver does - unfortunately, I don't believe there is a generic way to tell the driver to provide it's MAC address 'as provided by the hardware'. Of course, there are cases where there isn't a hardware network card for that particular interface - virtual network drivers for virtualization and when using bridges and software switches for example.
And of course, the hardware may be such that you can't actually read the 'original' MAC address when it has been overwritten by software, because there is only one set of registers for the MAC address itself.
I had a quick look at the pcnet32.c drivers (because it's one of the models of network card that I have a rough idea how it works and where the different registers are, etc, so I can see what it does). As far as I can see, it supports no method of actually asking 'what is your PROM ethernet address' - the MAC address is read out during the 'probe1' section of the module initialization, and stored away. No further access to those hardware registers is made.
Mats PeterssonMats Petersson
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Well, the old ethernet address remains in the first bytes of the card eeprom (at least for some types of cards), so it is possible to extract it using
ethtool
where tt:uu:ww:xx:yy:zz is old mac address
begemotv2718begemotv2718
This may not be the programmatic way, but why not search
dmesg . All of my machines' NICs spit out the MAC address at detection time.
Try something like this:
Different NICs display the MAC address differently, but the log will always contain the kernel given name of the adapter (in most cases Youssef Bouhjira
eth0 or wlan0 ).
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user3462738user3462738
This command lists all the ethernet devices and original HW addresses.
R4C3RR4C3R
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged linuxsocketslinux-kernellinux-device-drivermac-address or ask your own question.Comments are closed.
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