Unique ID for hardware devices

Question

Hi I am doing a project to identify if any of the hardware (Mouse Keyboard etc) is removed or replaced with another one. I tried Device ID and PNP Device ID using ManagementObjectSearcher but it is not changing even if i replace a hardware ie if i replace my mouse with another mouse the device ID and PNPDeviceID i am having is the same as former. What is this PNPDeviceID and DeviceID ? Is there any unique ID with which i can identify a particular hardware ? and how to get it? Thanks in advance

jaz Elavumkal · Answer

Thanks for your reply Well it has nothing to do with the software. what i am trying to do is a way to identify if someone replaces any hardware of my PC with another similar one. Consider i am 20 PC's with similar hardware (Keyboard mouse etc). let PC-1 and PC-2 are having similar Keyboards of the same make and model. and if PC-1's Keyboard gets faulty and someone replaces PC-1's keyboard with PC-2's keyboard i need a way to identify that keyboard does not belong to PC-1. So what i am trying to do is to save some unique Hardware ID(?) to the PC and compare it with the current hardware ID every time the OS starts. Is there any ID/Key for every hardware so that i can identify it

Sam Hobbs · Answer

It depends on the hardware. There is nothing that will work for all hardware. If you are attempting to develop a way to protect your software from improper use there and hundreds of other developers trying to do the same thing.