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Specifying Hardware IDs for a computer

Important

Device metadata is deprecated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. For information about the replacement for this functionality, see Driver Package Container Metadata.

Devices and Printers recognizes the computer as a device container. As a result, the computer can be identified within a device metadata package by using a HardwareID XML element that specifies a unique hardware ID value. This hardware ID value for the computer is known as a computer hardware ID, or CHID. For more information about CHIDs, see Computer Hardware ID (CHID).

Using Computer HardwareIDs with PC Device Metadata packages

Each computer has a ranked set of CHIDs (referred to as HardwareID-0 through HardwareID-14), where lower numbers are more specific and higher numbers are more general. Each CHID is a GUID formed by hashing a different combination of SMBIOS fields. For the full list of CHID definitions by Windows version, see Computer Hardware ID (CHID).

For Windows 7 systems, we highly recommend that vendors do the following when selecting a hardware ID value to use as the HardwareID XML element value for the computer.

  • Use HardwareID-3 or HardwareID-4 as the first choice if the device metadata package matches a computer that has a specific make, family, and model. This allows a metadata package to match the specified computer, which provides the most precise metadata for the computer.

  • Use HardwareID-5, as the second choice if the device metadata package covers the entire family of computers. In this case, the computer family is unique and is not branded with more than one product line.

  • Use HardwareID-6 or HardwareID-7 as the third choice if the device metadata package covers all of your computers or those computers with a specific enclosure type.

Note

For Windows 7 PC device metadata, HardwareID-1 and HardwareID-2 are reserved for future use. Don't use them for the computer's hardware ID.

Note

For Windows 8 PC device metadata, don't use HardwareID-1, HardwareID-2, HardwareID-3 for the computer's hardware ID. HardwareID-1, HardwareID-2, HardwareID-3 are reserved for future use. Instead, use HardwareID-4, HardwareID-5, HardwareID-6, HardwareID-7, HardwareID-8, HardwareID-9, and HardwareID-10.

To specify that the hardware ID is for a computer device container, use the following rules:

  • Delimit the hardware ID string with '{' and '}' characters.
  • Add the prefix 'ComputerMetadata\' in front of the hardware ID string.

Here is an example of a HardwareID XML element for the computer:

DOID:ComputerMetadata\{c20d5449-511e-4cb5-902a-a541239322aa}

For more information about the format requirements of the HardwareID XML element, see HardwareID.

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