You can think of your computer’s MAC address as something akin to a serial number.  Each piece of networking equipment has a MAC address, and MAC addresses are useful in certain networking contexts, such as when managing security for your wireless router. Let’s learn how to find it in windows.

1. Open the  Command Prompt (shell).   Do this by going to START->RUN.  In the box type in “cmd” and hit enter.

2.  Then type “ipconfig /all” in the command prompt.

3.   You will then get a long list of entries and numbers.

Note that if you will have entries for your ethernet card and your wireless card.  In this case you want the physical address of the wirless card — since you are securing a wireless router.  Take a look a the two red arrows — you will see “Wireless LAN…” and “Ethernet adapter Local…”.

Look under the “Wireless LAN…” heading and find where it says “Physical Address”.  This is the MAC address of your card.  It should be in this format:

A1-4C-D3-01-42-5a

(I’ve greyed out my details here).

That’s how you find a the MAC address for your wireless adapter in windows. Any questions?