>>>Larry,
>>>
>>>This is cool. Maybe you ought to write an article about it.
>>
>>Don't think I haven't thought about it. ;-)
>
>Please do. I have had very unreliable results no matter what method I have used. The MACADDRESS.OCX only works on NT/2K and even then I have had it return 12 zeros on some machines. Even on supposedly identical machines, I have had it work on one and return zeros on the other. On Win9x/ME running Novell client32, I have had problems with NetLib doing the same thing. I have also use the API suggestions directly with mixed results. The Unique ID [GUID] offered by Christof Lange or Rod Paddock or one of those guys even does not return the same value every time.
>
>I can not believe there is no 100% reliable way to read the MAC address from a netcard because WinIPCFG on Win9x machines will do it right every time. The equivalent utility on NT/2K does it reliably as well.

I'm afraid Larry's WMI solutions won't be any more universal than the other solutions you've tried- it requires that WMI be installed on the machine running the code, and AFAIK, only Win2K and up come with it stock.