View DELL Service Tag and Express Service Code From Linux and Windows

by Ramesh Natarajan on October 24, 2008

[Dell Server]When you call DELL customer support for any help, they will ask for either Service Tag or Express Service Code. You also need service tag to download drivers and documentations from DELL support website.

When you have physical access to the system, you can easily identify the service tag affixed on the body of the server. DELL support site shows the exactly location of the service tag and express code stickers for various DELL equipments.

When you don’t have physical access to the server, you can get the same information remotely from the OS level. Using Windows or Linux command line you can easily get DELL service tag as explained below.

1. Get DELL Service Tag on remote Windows system

Login to the Windows remote-host using VNC or remote desktop connection. Use WMIC on Windows to get service tag as shown below.

C:\>wmic bios get serialnumber
SerialNumber
ABCDEF1

Following WMIC command will give make and model number along with service tag.

C:\>wmic csproduct get vendor,name,identifyingnumber
IdentifyingNumber    Name                Vendor
ABCDEF1              PowerEdge 2950      Dell Inc.

If VNC or remote desktop connection to the remote-host is not available,  execute the following from the local-host to get the service tag of the remote-host.

C:\>wmic /user:administrator /node:remote-host bios get serialnumber
SerialNumber
ABCDEF1
[Note: Replace remote-host with the machine name of your remote-host.]

2. Get DELL Service Tag on remote Linux system

Login to the Linux remote-host using SSH. Use dmidecode on Linux to get service tag as shown below.

[remote-host]# dmidecode -s system-serial-number
ABCDEF1

3. Get DELL Express Service Code From Service Tag

Service Tag is a base-36 integer.  Once you have the Service Tag, you can calculate express service code yourself. Express Service Code is base-10 decimal integer of Service Tag. Dell uses express service code mainly for their support call-routing. When you call dell support, their automated call-routing system may ask you to enter express service code, which you can easily enter in your telephone, as it is just a bunch of numbers, instead of characters.

Use the following online tools to find express service code from service tag and vice-versa.


If you own systems other than DELL, such as HP, IBM, Sony, Toshiba, Acer etc., how do you find out serial number? Does the same method explained above works for you (or) Do you use a different method to identify serial numbers? Please leave your comment.

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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Ruben October 24, 2008 at 8:52 am

Cool¡¡¡
I had a lot of problems to look for Dell’s Service Tag

2 Gagan Brahmi October 25, 2008 at 3:54 am

You can also give the type number for the information you wish to fetch.

So for getting the serial number of a machine you can use

# dmidecode –type 1

this will provide you all the information related to the machine.

3 Dan January 2, 2009 at 8:37 am

I”m not getting wmic to run remotely via psexec. Is there some way to run it without logging on via RDP?

4 Marcus April 28, 2009 at 10:42 am

Thanks a ton…just this handy tip, and it worked great.

5 Vidooshak July 22, 2009 at 6:20 am

Thanks. A very useful tip! Works great on Citrix VM as well.

6 Ramesh Natarajan July 25, 2009 at 12:31 am

@Ruben, @Marcus, @Vidooshak,

Thanks for your comments. I’m glad you were able to use this article and identify the DELL service tag and express code on your servers.

@Gagan,

Thanks for pointing out about the dmidecode command. For those who are interested, we wrote an article about dmidecode command that can be used to get the DELL service tag on Unix environment.

@Dan,

What is the error message you are getting while trying to execute wmic command?

7 Gareth November 5, 2009 at 4:17 pm

Hello people, i see here that some of you are very knowledgable regards PC’s and scripting. I have a big predicament and would appreciate any assistance; i can not find my service tag for my Dell Precision M90. It is a 2nd hand refurbished laptop, which for some reason does not have a tag number in the BIOS (F2 setup) and because it is 2nd hand Dell have no direct record of this computer and are unable to help me at all! The Company whom i bought the laptop from are being very unhelpful to! Please help me to find the TAG for my computer so that i can finally address some of the issues i have been having, which ironically it seems i can only fix through the Dell website!

Your most gratefully Gareth

8 Evan December 4, 2009 at 3:08 pm

This works well for PE 2600s and up. I have a PE 2500 that has no serial information, and I also came across two 2600s that have the same serial information.
This will work for IBM Blade servers as well, though the tag information is in a different place.
~~~~~~~~~
I created a “lazy” batch file for me. Obviously you can expand on it, but this was all i needed. I used “ABCD123″ as the serial place holder.
~~start script~~
@echo off
set mchname=
set ipaddy=
set mchname=%1
echo.
echo Host Name: %mchname%
for /f “tokens=3* delims= ” %%a in (‘ping -n 1 %mchname% ^| find /i “reply from”‘) do set ipaddy=%%a
set ipaddy=%ipaddy::=%
echo.
echo IP Address: %ipaddy%
echo.
wmic /node:%1 bios get serialnumber

wmic /node:%1 csproduct get vendor,name,identifyingnumber

set mchname=
set ipaddy=

~~end script~~
~~~~~~~~~
Host Name: pcname1

IP Address: 1.2.4.3

SerialNumber
ABCD123

IdentifyingNumber Name Vendor
ABCD123 PowerEdge 2600 Dell Computer Corporation

~~~~~~~~

Host Name: pcname2

IP Address: 1.2.3.4

SerialNumber
0000000

IdentifyingNumber Name Vendor
0000000 IBM eServer BladeCenter HS20 -[ABCD123]- IBM
~~~~~~~~

9 AHMAD February 18, 2010 at 12:59 pm

forget my hdd password on DELL 1537
hdd passwore error code is (05758)
system service tag code is (9HGR64J)

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