For my massively multiplayer game, I would like to be able to ban people based on their processor serial number - does anyone know how I can retrieve this information? I''m pretty sure that the new Pentiums all have unique identifiers (I know for sure that the StrongARM chips do - since that''s one way people generate keycodes for their PocketPC shareware), and maybe all modern processors do? If this is impractical, what other unique system identifiers could I use? Does anyone know how to retrieve a computer''s MAC address? It''s cached in the registry someplace, isn''t it? Or better yet, does anyone know how to read it directly from the NIC? Is this what the NDIS drivers are for? Do other system components like RAM have unique identifiers that are easy to get to? I like the idea of banning on the basis of hardware ID tags instead of something weak like IP addresses - everyone I know has a dynamic IP address and banning by IPs in games like CounterStrike don''t discourage cheaters (since everyone knows how to release/renew their DHCP-assigned IP), and I''m not about to ban entire subnets from playing my game. ---------------------------------------- Let be be finale of seem, seems to me. ---------------------------------------- Coding: http://www.stanford.edu/~jjshed/coding Miscellany: http://www.stanford.edu/~jjshed

yes, from PIII on there is a unique processor ID, which could be queried - but: i'm not sure, if this also works if the user has disabled this feature in the bios, because in most bios there is an option to disable it.
perhaps you should start at http://www.sandpile.org/

edit: the macaddress of the users network card can be queried over some systemcalls. if you are on windows look in the MSDN, at msdn.microsoft.com - on other systems i do not know.


DJSnow
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this post is manually created and therefore legally valid without a signature

[edited by - DJSnow on January 4, 2004 8:34:41 AM]