If your PC monitor suddenly stops working, develops dead pixels, or suffers a hardware failure, you will need to contact the manufacturer for a warranty claim. The very first piece of information the support technician will ask for is the monitor’s serial number. While this number is usually printed on a physical sticker on the back of the monitor, those stickers can fade, peel off, or be impossible to reach if the monitor is heavily mounted to a wall or a multi-screen arm. Fortunately, Windows 11 can query the monitor digitally to retrieve this information.
The Limitations of Software Retrieval
It is important to note that this method relies on the monitor correctly broadcasting its Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) to the graphics card. High-quality monitors from major brands (Dell, LG, Asus) almost always include their serial number in this digital handshake. However, cheaper, generic, or off-brand monitors may simply broadcast “Generic PnP Monitor” and omit the serial number entirely. If the software method fails, you will have to find the physical sticker.
How to Find the Serial Number Using PowerShell
The quickest and most reliable way to pull the digital serial number is by using a specific command in Windows PowerShell.
- Click the Start button in Windows 11.
- Type PowerShell into the search bar.
- Right-click on the Windows PowerShell app icon and select Run as administrator. If prompted by User Account Control, click Yes.
- When the blue command line window opens, carefully type (or copy and paste) the following command exactly as it appears:
Get-WmiObject WmiMonitorID -Namespace root\wmi
- Press Enter.
Understanding the PowerShell Output
The command will output a block of data for every monitor currently connected to your system. Look for the line labelled SerialNumberID.
You will notice that the serial number looks like a string of random numbers separated by commas (e.g., 48, 52, 57, 51...). This is because the serial number is displayed in raw decimal ASCII code, not readable text.
How to Translate the Serial Number
To convert this code into the actual alphanumeric serial number you need for warranty support, you can use a slightly more advanced PowerShell command that automatically translates the ASCII values into standard text:
(Get-WmiObject WmiMonitorID -Namespace root\wmi).SerialNumberID -ne 0 | ForEach-Object { [char]$_ }
Press Enter. This will output your monitor’s actual serial number (e.g., “04938ABC”), which you can immediately provide to customer support.