SCCM 2007 R2 – Find a Computer by MAC Address

A question that I’m asked very often is how to find a computer by MAC address in SCCM. I’m using SCCM 2007 R2 in my example so don’t quote me on this if you are using SCCM 2012

When you look at the contents of a collection in the ConfigMgr Console you will see that there are a few fields, and MAC address very certainly isn’t one of them. You can’t even add it as a column, so there is no quick workaround there. If you want to search here you have to know the name of the computer as it is registered in SCCM.

There are a few ways to handle this query, and this one is done through the GUI. What I’ve done is to create a “dummy” collection and I use it to run through the process of adding a computer by MAC address so that I can get the name, site code and status of the machine without actually adding to anything that would actually affect the computer.

First I create a collection named Find_By_MAC_Address which I will just use for this purpose, so it will have no advertisements associated with it. Next we just have to right click the collection and select Properties:

On the Membership Rules tab, click the Direct Membership button:

Click Next in the Create Direct Membership Rule Wizard (don’t ask why Microsoft keeps putting splash pages):

 In the form you will use System Resource as the Resource class and MAC Addresses for Attribute name. When you type in the MAC address in the Value field, make sure that you use the AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA format because that is how it is stored inside the SCCM database:

 When you are prompted for the Collection to search within, you can simply click Next because the default search context is the All Systems collection. This saves a few clicks instead of Browsing. That being said, if you want to limit your search to a specific collection, choose it with the Browse… button and then click Next:

If the computer is registered in the SCCM database you will be presented with the name in the Resources window. If there is no computer registered with that MAC address, the wizard advances automatically to the final window stating that there are no results.

There are definitely many ways to achieve this, but hopefully this is a quick way to get you the information that you need. The advantage to this, is that if your Help Desk and desktop support teams have access to the remote ConfigMgr Console (which they should!) they can use this method.

My next trick is to work out the PowerShell/SQL query to render the same information. As soon as I get that put together I will be sure to share it with everyone!