How to Get the Piece Part Identification (PPID) Number of the Motherboard on a Dell Computer

There are various reasons why you might require the serial number or PPID of the motherboard. From checking that you have the correct part in the computer to finding the specifications of the part, and finding a replacement or upgrade for it.

This article shows two methods to get this information without removing any parts or reading the label on the component.

The first method works from within the Windows operating system environment. 

The second method is used in both Windows and Linux-based computers as it operates outside of the operating system in the preboot environment.

Cause information is not available.

Method One - Get the serial number or PPID of the motherboard using the Windows Command Line (CMD)

1. Tap or click the Start button and type CMD. In Windows 8 or 8.1, swipe in from the right edge for the screen and then tap Search.
2. Tap or click the application Command Prompt to open it.

3. Type wmic baseboard get product, serialnumber, version and press the Enter key.

   You get the following results with the serial number:

   C:\>wmic baseboard get product, serialnumber, version
   Product     SerialNumber                                   Version
   012XXX      /0X12XX3/CN0123456X7890/         A00

Note: If you get an error or exception returned instead. Check the error in a search engine such as Google or Bing and in the Microsoft Technet site. These issues are down to local issues with your local servers. For further uses of the WMIC command, see the Microsoft article Gathering WMI Data without Writing a Single Line of Code .

Method Two - Get the serial number or PPID of the motherboard using the Dell ePSA log file

1. Connect a USB flash drive to the Dell computer and run the preboot diagnostics. Learn How to Run a Preboot Diagnostic Test on a Dell Computer.

2. On exiting the diagnostics, you are prompted to save the test results to a text file on the USB named psa.txt.

   

3. To access this file, connect the USB flash drive to a working computer, use the File Explorer to navigate to the root of the USB flash drive and open or edit psa.txt.

   Note: The psa.txt log file is limited to a single 64 KB internal buffer. This buffer is written to the log file when the ePSA diagnostics exits. Systems with numerous devices are likely to cause this limit to be reached. When this happens, the oldest entries in the buffer are over written with the latest entries. That means, the log buffer should always contain the most recent data that is written and guarantee that the last failure information is present. Configuration information is inserted in the buffer early in the ePSA diagnostics execution. There may not be enough room for both configuration information and all testing results.

4. The serial number or PPID of the motherboard is shown under the [cables] section.

   

5. The serial number or PPID of other devices such as the hard disk drive (hard drive) or optical disc drive (ODD) is available in the same file.

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