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Q: Getting system information from DMI/SMBIOS? ( No Answer,   3 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Getting system information from DMI/SMBIOS?
Category: Computers > Programming
Asked by: damoncz-ga
List Price: $10.00
Posted: 28 Oct 2002 14:20 PST
Expires: 03 Dec 2002 20:15 PST
Question ID: 91385
Hi!
I need to read system information from SMBIOS/DMI in a Visual C++
program in Windows 98/ME/2000/XP. I have already started to write the
code to read the structure from SMBIOS(after finding the location in
BIOS) but since it is a painstaking task I wanted to get an already
made source/library. I know there are a few commercial libraries out
there to do it, but is there any free source code/library to help me
out?
Thanks!

Request for Question Clarification by mathtalk-ga on 09 Nov 2002 13:40 PST
Hi, damoncz:

Please check the links I provided below as comments.  Source code for
the decoding of SMBIOS either in DOS or Windows is provided there as
assembler, which can be exploited under Visual C++ with less effort
than rewriting in C/C++.  If this addresses your needs I'd like to
post this as an answer.

Thanks in advance,
mathtalk-ga

Clarification of Question by damoncz-ga on 09 Nov 2002 14:00 PST
Dear mathtalk-ga,
I am aware of that website and their SMBIOS program. Unfortunately, it
is all written in assembly and it is not very useful to port it into
C++. I don't have any problem finding the SMBIOS signature in BIOS and
reading data from. I have started writting a library myself, and I
have completted it up to Structure Table 7 of DMI, but because it was
a tedious task to finish it up I thought maybe there is a library
available in C++.
I appreciate your help and I still would be happy if you can find any
useful information or a library. We can even negotiate a higher
fee(other than the List price in google) if you can port or provide me
a library :-)
Thanks again!
Damon

Request for Question Clarification by mathtalk-ga on 10 Nov 2002 07:17 PST
Hi, damon:

Thanks for the clarification.  To explore the idea of doing some
custom programming a bit further, or just to kick some ideas around,
which version of Visual C++ are you using?  Have you considered
storing the SMBIOS information in an XML format?  What kind of
presentation are you striving for in outputting the data?

regards, mathtalk

Clarification of Question by damoncz-ga on 11 Nov 2002 10:08 PST
I am programming in VisualStudio.NET but this library that I am
developing is  written in Standard C++(without MFC). I hadn't thought
of outputting data into XML format but thats a good idea to use in
future versions of the program. This library searches the BIOS from
SBMBIOS location and fills its C++ structure(struct, there are about
40 of them) with SMBIOS structures, and user can access to the
structure through some functions. Basically, I need to read SMBIOS
info to get system information(such as its BIOS, Motherboard, et.c)
Regards,
Damon

Request for Question Clarification by mathtalk-ga on 11 Nov 2002 19:55 PST
Apparently MS has put some SMBIOS structure C++ classes together for
WBEM under the Windows DDK.  If you want, I can research that and
summmarize as an answer.  It is described as being "free" to IHV's,
ISV's, and OEM's.  I'd guess we qualify as ISV's in some sense:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmeother/hh/wmeother/smbios_0f5e.asp

Hope this helps,
mathtalk-ga
Answer  
There is no answer at this time.

Comments  
Subject: Re: Getting system information from DMI/SMBIOS?
From: dbistline-ga on 28 Oct 2002 21:04 PST
 
Free and Windows on the same planet...Come out in the open(Java) were waiting...
Subject: Re: Getting system information from DMI/SMBIOS?
From: mathtalk-ga on 30 Oct 2002 20:39 PST
 
You perhaps discovered this for yourself:

http://www.sudleyplace.com

That purports to allow FTP downloads of a Windows utility (with ASM
source code) to display DMI and SMBIOS information.  I couldn't get
the link to work from IE... didn't try to directly FTP GET the file
though.

regards, mathtalk-ga
Subject: Re: Getting system information from DMI/SMBIOS?
From: mathtalk-ga on 07 Nov 2002 18:56 PST
 
Hi, damoncz-ga:

I'm not sure if it was the different page links or the phase of the
moon, but tonight I was able to download the zip files with source and
executables for both DOS and Windows versions of the SMBIOS utility
here:

http://www.sudleyplace.com/download.htm

Maybe you could post some sort of clarification if you are still
interested in this "answer", e.g. whether some assembler source is of
any use to you, etc.

regards, mathtalk-ga

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