For Students

Document your personal property for recovery purposes

Every year thousands of laptops and desktop computers are stolen or lost. You can help recover your property by recording identifying information about your computer(s). The easiest obtainable information that Police will require is the make, model and serial number listed on the computer usualy via manufacture sticker(s).

Other equaly important information is what is refered to as the computer's unique MAC address. This is a alpha-numeric code that is specific to your computer's network ('wired' and 'wireless') cards. Below is a list of steps that help you record the MAC address along with a "batch program" for Windows users. You should be made aware that you should not run "batch programs" that you do not trust or are from an untrusted source because these programs are designed to automaticly run computer commands that may not be desirable. If you choose not to run the "batch program" the same manual steps are listed below for your use. Macintosh 10.X, UNIX and Linux users will need to run seperate commands listed after the Windows commands below.

Windows Users

  • Click 'Start' > 'Run' and enter "command" (without the quotes) and click the 'OK' button. This will open Windows 'DOS' prompt.
  • At the DOS prompt enter the following without quotes (or use copy and paste): "ipconfig -all >>C:\mac-address.txt".
  • You should now open the text file by clicking 'Start' > 'Run' and entering "C:\mac-address.txt" to open the text file, which you should either print or email to yourself for record purposes. Alternatively you may download and save the 'batch file' mac-address.bat to your computer desktop and double click the program to record the information to "C:\mac-address.txt" for printing and emailing purposes.

Macintosh 10.X, UNIX, and Linux users may gather similar information by the following instructions:

  • Open a treminal session
  • At the terminal prompt enter without the quotes "ipconfig >/tmp/mac-address.txt"
  • Open /tmp/mac-address.txt with a text editor or browser to print and/or email the contents for record purposes.