Windows.System.Profile.HardwareIdentification.GetPackageSpecificToken throws exception

Question

I'm trying to get a hardware id with a .net console app (target framewotk is net8.0-windows10.0.17763.0).

The code is rather trivial, just

var token = Windows.System.Profile.HardwareIdentification.GetPackageSpecificToken(null);

However I get

Unhandled exception. System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80010117)
   at WinRT.ExceptionHelpers.<ThrowExceptionForHR>g__Throw|38_0(Int32 hr)
   at WinRT.ExceptionHelpers.ThrowExceptionForHR(Int32 hr)
   at ABI.Windows.System.Profile.IHardwareIdentificationStaticsMethods.GetPackageSpecificToken(IObjectReference _obj, IBuffer nonce)
   at Windows.System.Profile.HardwareIdentification.GetPackageSpecificToken(IBuffer nonce)
   at TPMGames.Program.Main(String[] args) in C:\Projects\TPMGames\TPMGames\Program.cs:line 7

The COMException code means Call context cannot be accessed after call completed..

I've tried [STAThread] but no change.

Somewhere in the doc it says that this is for store apps. Is there any way I can make use of it in a windows-only console app?

Or does it need a specific project type?

IInspectable · Accepted Answer · 2025-11-21 15:27:20Z

GetPackageSpecificToken() returns a unique hardware ID for the current application package. This works for packaged apps (sometimes called "store apps") only.

To get a hardware ID for an unpackaged application, use the SystemIdentification class instead. GetSystemIdForPublisher() returns a SystemIdentificationInfo class with an Id property. This ID is a collection of bytes that is not intended to be interpreted as a string.

The following snippet¹ gets the ID and encodes it as a hex string:

var buffer = Windows.System.Profile.SystemIdentification.GetSystemIdForPublisher();
var id = buffer.Id;
var asHex = Windows.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicBuffer.EncodeToHexString(id);

The documentation for GetSystemIdForPublisher() leaves out a crucial detail: For unpackaged applications without an application manifest, the system will use a generic publisher, which is the same for all such applications. Raymond Chen explains this in his blog post How can I get a signature for a Windows system that will remain unchanged even if the user reinstalls Windows?^[archived].

¹ The code is borrowed from Raymond Chen's blog post linked above.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Windows.System.Profile.HardwareIdentification.GetPackageSpecificToken throws exception

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related