What should be the unique ID of a machine? Its motherboard ID? Windows Product ID?

Question

I want to retrieve the unique ID of a machine.

Like others I also did a lot of research, and found none of the process of Unique ID generation works perfectly.

Answer 1

the Unique ID of a machine?

There is no such thing as "The Unique ID of a machine", as you have found.

You need to define your requirements, and use an ID (possibly allocated by yourself) that meets those requirements. E.g. for a web app, a cookie with a GUID might be sufficient to distinguish otherwise anonymous users (the small number of users who use multiple browsers or "in private" mode can be ignored).

For systems management assigning a GUID at the system level should be enough (multiple OS installs with multi-boot need to be tracked separately anyway).

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