I need to run an equipment audit and to do that I need to obtain the Windows PC, monitor etc. serial numbers.
So I faced with going to each PC and manually writing down the numbers.
Is there a way I can get this programmatically so each user can run a small program and email me the results?
If this information is anywhere, it'd be in WMI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Management_Instrumentation) - you could write a VBscript script to query this information and save it to a remote share on a server for example.
I am not quite sure if this is exactly what you want, but there is pay software made by DameWare that allows you to easily remote connect to other machines and get lots of information. I haven't used it much yet, but I think there is a way to make batch scripts so it can go pull information like that for you, or see what apps are installed on the machines. Even worse case though, you don't have to run to each machine. (I am assuming you mean SN like the MS product ID)
WMI is definitely the way to go. You can get quite a bit of useful audit information through that API.
Generally no. If your computers are all Dell, though, you might be able to get some information (maybe the serial number?) for the PC itself.
The monitor, if it supports VESA EDID (DDC, EDID, EEDID), may also include a 32 bit serial number - which may or may not have any relation to the serial number printed on the monitor's label. You may be able to access this through the display driver - Windows has access to portions of it (to display monitor resolution and timing) so I expect the manufacturer/model/serial number is stashed somewhere as well.
However, making such a program that would work across all systems and monitors would likely be much more work than simply going to each station and recording it, unless all the systems have the same hardware.
Good luck!
Michael Baird appears to have written a VBS script to read the EDID information. The script reads and parses the monitor EDID information from the registry in order to retrieve asset information.
http://cwashington.netreach.net/depo/view.asp?Index=980&ScriptType=vbscript