Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

The other day I was working with a licensing issue and someone requested my MAC address to track something down. I know I could dig into the adapter properties, but that’s an annoying set of clicks in Windows. I decided to spend that time checking out how to get the MAC address from a command line.

Normal CMD

I tried “ipconfig” at the command line, which I always have open. I got my IP and DNS info, but no MAC. A quick search on Google showed me I needed more detail.

ipconfig /all

This gives me all the info, as you can see below:

PowerShell

I’d prefer PowerShell for many things like this, mostly because I could programmatically extract the values and use them elsewhere. I don’t need that here, but I might for something.

In this case, this is in the WMIObject, which is an ugly command. I’ll never remember this.

Get-WmiObject win32_networkadapterconfiguration | select description, macaddress

However, there’s an easier cmdlet.

Get-NetAdapter |select MacAddress, Name

This will return what I want. I get see which MAC is associated with which adapter.

Both quick ways to get some information.

SQLNewBlogger

I had to get some info, and I took a minute to learn something. This took me just 2-3 minutes to learn how to do this and practice. Then it was less than 10 minutes to do this post.

For reference, I used these links:

• https://devblogs.microsoft.com/scripting/powertip-use-powershell-to-find-mac-address/
• https://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-learn-mac-address-windows-7-windows-81/
• https://its.uiowa.edu/support/article/1618