Getting network adapter type (VPN/Dial-up/Wireless/LAN)

Hi

How can I get the network adapter type? Eg. Wireless / LAN / VPN / Dial-up

Basically what I want to do is to automatically get the MAC addresses from the LAN and Wireless network adapters from Windows XP SP2 computers.
My biggest problem is that a simple thing like "ipconfig /all" doesn't work since the computers don't all have English versions of Windows and then the adapter names aren't like "Local Area Network" and the "Physical Address" is something different too.

I've already tried to get the adapter type with "Win32_NetworkAdapter" (Windows WMI scripting) and via the "GetAdaptersInfo" API call. I was able to get the MAC address in both ways. Am I just missing something here?

Then my second problem is that sometimes the network adapters are disabled and then I can't get the MACs at all.

Thank you in advance