Get mac address from command line (CMD)

We can find mac address (physical address) of a computer using the command ‘getmac‘. This can be used to get mac address for remote computers also. Below are few examples on how to use this command. It works on XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003 and Server 2008 operating systems.

Get mac addresses from CMD

Just run the command getmac to get the mac addresses. Find an example below.

C:\>getmac
Physical Address    Transport Name
=================== ==========================================================
2C-3F-45-02-1B-32   \Device\Tcpip_{7E49B486-120A-4BC2-2114-B345A4D5C5}
10-13-17-BC-12-48   Media disconnected
22-B3-C5-30-76-78   \Device\Tcpip_{213E8D2A-1DBE-4240-8301-BE6F3EACAF9D}
00-05-2A-3C-78-00   \Device\Tcpip_{F01E3FC2-A5A1-6940-D1A1-C7521AEC4296}
2C-23-45-14-23-AD   Media disconnected
C:\>

This command does not show mac addresses for the network connections which are disabled. You can run ncpa.cpl and check which NICs are disabled. Further, I have received comments that this command does not help identify the mac address for a specific device. For example, if I need to get the mac address for my WiFi card, output of getmac command is not helpful. We can use ipconfig command to deal with this.

C:\>ipconfig /all
Windows IP Configuration
   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : PC-10234
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . : mydomain.com
   
   DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : mydomain.com
                                       mydomain.com
Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : mydomain.com
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6205
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 3C-99-88-64-A1-F0
   
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : mydomain.com
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 73-2B-4F-D5-12-A0
  
C:\>

Get mac address of a remote computer

We can retrieve the mac addressses for a remote computer using nbtstat command.
Example:

C:\>nbtstat -a 10.63.71.55
Local Area Connection:
Node IpAddress: [10.59.13.47] Scope Id: []
           NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table
       Name               Type         Status
    --------------------------------------------
    7CF71D1C3B05     UNIQUE      Registered
    MAC Address = 00-00-00-00-00-00
Wireless Network Connection:
Node IpAddress: [10.63.71.58] Scope Id: []
           NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table
       Name               Type         Status
    --------------------------------------------
    7CF71D1C3B05     UNIQUE      Registered
    MAC Address = 7C-F7-1D-1C-3B-05
Local Area Connection 2:
Node IpAddress: [0.0.0.0] Scope Id: []
    Host not found.

Alternatively, We can run the below command to retrieve the mac addresses of a remote computer.

getmac /s remote_computer /u username /p password

remote_computer : Full name of the remote computer or IP address
username and password are of the account on the remote computer.

Example:

C:\>getmac /S remotepc.domain.com  /u administrator /p adminpassword
Physical Address    Transport Name
=================== ==========================================================
22-15-25-9C-3A-29   Media disconnected
34-11-45-7A-9C-48   \Device\Tcpip_{678DD7BB-675D-4E4C-E0AE-A261490EBE8C}

If you do not want to specify the password, you can skip /p parameter. You will be prompted to enter the password and the command execution will take place after that.

Errors:

Using getmac command we can retrieve the mac addresses of the machines running windows OS only. If you try this for a Linux machine you would get the error “The RPC server is unavailable.”

If you provide incorrect password, the command would fail with the error message “Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.”

Also Read:
Windows CMD commands reference