We often look for some fixed serial numbers as an universal id. Usually we can use WMI class to retrieve  some hardware ID as following: Win32_BaseBoard Win32_Processor: ProcessorId Win32_BIOS: SerialNumber, ReleaseDate Win32_MotherboardDevice: InstallDate Win32_DiskDrive We can refer to MSDN WMI C++ Application Examples for some VC++ samples for the usage.But not all of the above WMI [...]