Hardware S/N Lookup

[DarkSerge 71]

Is there a website out there where you can type in a serial number on a piece of hardware and it tells you who made it, it's model number, and other bits of info?I thought at one point I had used a site like this. Sometimes I have hardware I want to identify. Of course I can look at it and learn a bit, like I know the difference between a video card and a network card, but like the specifics you can't always tell.For example, I have a video card sitting on my desk. I know it's an ATI video card, AGP, 64 MB of memory, with VGA, DVI, and Video-out ports. That's all I know about it. Within a few days I'll pop it in my computer and it'll be easy to figure out what it is and find drivers. But I'd like a way to identify parts without installing them.My main reason for wanting to know is that I do volunteer work with a charity that builds computers from donated and spare parts and there's a lot of boxes of unidentified hardware laying around.

[jolphil 45]

The only thing I can suggest is the lookup of the FCC ID Number...HereGoodluckjolphil

[Guest LilBambi]

I don't think there is an all encompassing serial number database. However, having said that, each hardware vendor, on their own site generally has a search where you can put the serial number.For that ATI card, you might want to try support.amd.com (since ATI was purchased by AMD, and use their built-in website search to search for the serial number.There are various ways to locate the serial number on an ATI video card.

The only thing I can suggest is the lookup of the FCC ID Number...HereGoodluckjolphil

Good one!

[DarkSerge 71]

Maybe it was the FCC ID I was thinking of instead of the serial number, can't remember.Thanks for the info

[Temmu 1,931]

there's 2 distinct things -1 is indeed the fcc id databaseand the other is the hardware id, found in computer, manage, device management, (some piece of hardware) properties, details, hardware ids.they look like this: pci\ven_10&dev_8168&subsys_045f51028for hardware ids, you can google starting with the first portion, but when you get to the "subsys" part, good luck.once again proving how utterly useless google is (except for tracking you personally.)