How to check if Computer is stolen?

I didn't want to end up hijacking http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/lets-...-ethics-2.html
so I decided to move to here.

Thanks Mechanic688, but that is not the one I was talking about.... the thread had sites like this Stolen Computer Registry - Background and was several months ago. I thought I had booked marked the sites, but for some reason I can't locate the information.

The reason I am looking for it now is because I am trying to be proactive in stopping the thieves around here and maybe help educate the police in the area with a few new tricks. My house was broke into several months ago (my laptop was stolen it was a DELL Inspirion 1501. service tag F65KRC1) and several more houses have been broken into on my road since then, but none of the items have been recovered.

I am just now getting to a point that I can work with the detective without going to a point of frustration and disappointment and just want to stop it from going on. I have a hunch and want to present it to the detective next week, now that I feel like I am able to work on the solution and not the problem.

Any information with sites like above would be greatly appreciated.

For your area, I would suggest just contacting them and see if they have some sort of list that can be sent out weekly or something like that. They may have all the answers you are looking for.

Dell "service tags" are not to a specific computer, but to a million "identical" computers. The number you need in this case is your serial number

Dell service tags are unique to each computer.

I did report it with dell and the service tag number is the number that is used to identify that specific computer.

As far as the sheriff they only check the surrounding counties for pawned items and don't look any further, but I am thinking that this is going across state lines.

Found the Thread I was looking! http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/elect...-property.html

hmmmm! I never would have imagined that so very few numbers/letters could specifically identify so many millions of separate, but in many cases, identical computers. Soooo, if the service tag, AND the serial number, are specific to a single computer, why have them both ??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bear

Soooo, if the service tag, AND the serial number, are specific to a single computer, why have them both ??

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I've wondered that myself. Any time I ever needed drivers from the Dell site, they always had 3 or 4 different possible devices that could be in the machine.

Bear,

A service tag (at least in Dell's case) is the serial number of the entire piece of hardware that was sold, known as the "computer". That's not to say each component (hard drive, motherboard, monitor) don't have a serial number of their own, but most people wouldn't report their hard drive's serial number to police. Just like a car, the engine and transmission may have a different serial number than the VIN for the whole car.

Your "so very few" numbers comment... think of license plates. Most of them (here in FL) are only 6 characters but we have millions of cars on the road with unique plates.

For example, if you convert service tag 5RFDP01 into a number, it comes out as 12,542,331,601. Yes, that's 12 billion.

There are 36 combinations for each character/digit in the service tag... about 78 million unique combinations.

Back to scrap talk :)