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Asset Tag Tool for Surface Pro 3

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Hi my name is Scott McArthur and I want to call out a tool that recently came out that allows Enterprise customers to set Asset Tags on Surface Pro 3.

Update 1/30/2018:  Note that in addition to Surface Pro 3 the Asset tag tool works with Surface 3, Surface Pro 4, Surface Book, Surface Studio, Surface Pro Model 1796, Surface Laptop, Surface Pro with LTE Advanced, and Surface Book 2.

This tool is available for download at the following location:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44076

The tool requires the following:

  • Surface Pro 3(other Surface devices not supported)
  • UEFI firmware version 3.9.150.0 or newer

It can be run from within Windows or from WindowsPE.  The download comes with a README.TXT that contains the following reference:

This tool gets or sets the proposed Asset Tag, which will be applied on next reboot.

The current Asset Tag is an SMBIOS setting which can be queried via WMI:

(Get-WmiObject -query "Select * from Win32_SystemEnclosure").SMBiosAssetTag

To get the proposed asset tag:

AssetTag -g

To clear the proposed asset tag:

AssetTag -s

To set the proposed asset tag:

AssetTag -s testassettag12

Valid values for this can be:

  • up to 36 characters long
  • valid characters including A-Z, a-z, 0-9, period and hyphen

You can view the Asset Tag in the UEFI settings under Device Information.

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Here is a PowerShell script demonstrating way to get proposed value and interpret errors.

Note that stout contains the Asset Tag and stderr contains error messages.

AssetTag -g > $asset_tag 2> $error_message
$asset_tag_return_code = $LASTEXITCODE
$asset_tag = $asset_tag.Trim("`r`n")

if ($asset_tag_return_code -eq 0) {
Write-Output ("Good Tag = " + $asset_tag)
} else {
Write-Output (
"Failure: Code = " + $asset_tag_return_code +
"Tag = " + $asset_tag +
"Message = " + $error_message)

}

Hope this helps with your Deployments.

Scott McArthur
Senior Support Escalation Engineer

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Thank you for the information on setting the Asset Tag on the Surface Pro 3. We have incorporated this into our deployment strategy and it works as explained.
    I do have one question though. We are trying to run a process immediately following "AssetTag.exe -s ComputerName" to pull this information back out and we have discovered that we MUST restart before the Asset Tag is actually entered. Is there a way to get the Asset Tag to actually get entered into the BIOS without a restart?

    Thank you,
    Jay
  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2015
    How can I get the asset tag to display as startup to I don't have to go into the UEFI settings to view it?

    It would be great to turn on the machine and be able to see it come up for simplicity.

    Thanks

    Lee
  • Anonymous
    September 30, 2015
    Is there a tool to update the asset info on the Surface Pro 2?
  • Anonymous
    September 30, 2015
    is there an Asset Tag Tool for Surface Pro 2, if so where can I find it?
  • Anonymous
    December 03, 2015
    Fails to set asset tag if UEFI administrator password has been cleared. Only works if UEFI password has never been set. The tool should be able to equate blank with cleared.
  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2017
    unable to change asset tag. I can read ok but when I try to clear or write new I receive the following error:Unexpected Error v.2.0.1144.0(668) hr=0x80040154