find mac address in windows

Try 'ipconfig /all' at a prompt

at any time there machine were up in your network, if yes then u can do arp -a ad it will list ip_address versus mac address.
or nbtstat -A "ip address"

How to obtain your MAC ethernet address

The MAC address is the equivalent to the serial number of your network card. Each MAC address is unique, and so identifies the network card you have installed in your computer.

Thx for your qwik response,

As I said earlier, I dont want to wait till all machines boot in XP and then run command promt and then ipconfig, all are new ones they will ask a lot of configurations. Is there any shot cut method like in BIOS or somehwere ...
Thx u

1. My guess is that if these dells have the network card built onto the motherboard, that yes they will include the mac address in the bios.  Although it is different for every machine so you will have to look.

2. If it's not in the bios you could do the job with a boot-floppy.
Follow this link for more information.
http://www.wown.info/j_helmig/nicdiag.htm

applekanna, it's easy, here is your solution:

make sure all your computers are running on the LAN, and assume their ip addresses are 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.30, then open a command prompt window, run the following commands:

for /l %a in (1,1,30) do ping 192.168.1.%a
arp -a

then you can get a complete list of those computers' mac addresses!

enjoy,
bbao

oh, forgot to say, do the above on any one of those networked computers... ;-)

bbao ,

Applekanna doesnot want to boot to windows at all. Looks like he has got new machines . Once you open new machines , it would basically startup with the windows xp OEM installation. He doesnot want to install windows xp in all machines and then  get MAC address. he wants to avoid that..

Sunray

thx guys....