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brute force

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i am trying to create an unattended cd. the whole reason for this is so i can use this on multiple computers. i used nlite and the drvierpacks. by the way the driverpacks are unbelievable. just did my first install and drivers are all there including graphics. amazing. my question is, since i want to use it on multiple computers, what do i put in for the computer name in nlite configuration. also i am not getting the box for logging into the domain. thanks for your time

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hello !!

i've the same problem and i've not the answer for the moment...

but in the winnt.sif, in the [userData] section, you can leave blank the "ComputerName", and during install, at t-34, an error appears, but after you can enter the computer name as you want... but i think it's not the best way to do that...

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hello !!

i've the same problem and i've not the answer for the moment...

but in the winnt.sif, in the [userData] section, you can leave blank the "ComputerName", and during install, at t-34, an error appears, but after you can enter the computer name as you want... but i think it's not the best way to do that...

yep. im not sure that is the best way to do it. i dont want any user input. it can take a while to get an answer here sometimes, although i am new to this. ill let you know what i get. right now i will be testing with a name there (test) and ill see what happens

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Hi I had this problem, when I was working as an IT-adm at the university

We ghosted all computers approx once a week. To automate the naming process I found this little tool on the internet.

http://mystuff.clarke.co.nz/MyStuff/wsname.asp

I works like a charm - It looks for a .txt file with network card MAC addresses and corresponding names.

Should work for you as well, all you need is to gather all you computer MAC addresses, and then put names on them.

Then make it run the first time your computer is logging on use RUN ONCE in registry, or just create a small bat file that deletes itself after executing and put that in the start folder

Hope this helps.

Kind Regards

Martin

Edited by prey
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Hi I had this problem, when I was working as an IT-adm at the university

We ghosted all computers approx once a week. To automate the naming process I found this little tool on the internet.

http://mystuff.clarke.co.nz/MyStuff/wsname.asp

I works like a charm - It looks for a .txt file with network card MAC addresses and corresponding names.

Should work for you as well, all you need is to gather all you computer MAC addresses, and then put names on them.

Then make it run the first time your computer is logging on use RUN ONCE in registry, or just create a small bat file that deletes itself after executing and put that in the start folder

Hope this helps.

Kind Regards

Martin

wow. is this the best we got. seems like a lot of pain. almost wondering if this whole unattended thing is worth it. got to be a better way to get names in there? i was hoping not to fallback to Ghost

thanks

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wow. is this the best we got. seems like a lot of pain. almost wondering if this whole unattended thing is worth it.

Eh? wsname is a great util (it's part of many small utils I keep on my USB mem stick). I've renamed thousands of workstations with it before. It does like 95% of the job for you. Just how much simpler do you expect? And no, there are no totally automatic solutions that just guesses the name for you. Don't wanna sound rude, but this is already very fast, simple and straightforward.

anyone know of a way to get a dell service tag number as the computer name

Trivial. Just get the service tag # using WMI (iirc you want the SerialNumber property of the Win32_SystemEnclosure class or else of the Win32_BIOS class -- sorry, don't have a Dell handy to check), then pass that # as an argument while calling wsname. Can be done with almost any scripting language (vbscript, jscript, powershell, or any "standard" language like C# or whatever you like)

Alternately, you can keep a database with mac addy's or service tag #s to workstation names or such, and call that in your script... So many possibilities.

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wow. is this the best we got. seems like a lot of pain. almost wondering if this whole unattended thing is worth it.

Eh? wsname is a great util (it's part of many small utils I keep on my USB mem stick). I've renamed thousands of workstations with it before. It does like 95% of the job for you. Just how much simpler do you expect? And no, there are no totally automatic solutions that just guesses the name for you. Don't wanna sound rude, but this is already very fast, simple and straightforward.

anyone know of a way to get a dell service tag number as the computer name

Trivial. Just get the service tag # using WMI (iirc you want the SerialNumber property of the Win32_SystemEnclosure class or else of the Win32_BIOS class -- sorry, don't have a Dell handy to check), then pass that # as an argument while calling wsname. Can be done with almost any scripting language (vbscript, jscript, powershell, or any "standard" language like C# or whatever you like)

Alternately, you can keep a database with mac addy's or service tag #s to workstation names or such, and call that in your script... So many possibilities.

sorry, i am not a programmer. to me it sounds difficult. but i am certainly willing to learn. let me take a look at wsname. any more tips would be appreicated. Thanks

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Actually, wsname even has an option to rename according to the asset tag ($ASSETTAG), but honestly, I never bothered. It's only good if all your PCs have an asset tag (most of ours don't). So we've been using other ways (like mac addys, we keep a database of such things)

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Actually, wsname even has an option to rename according to the asset tag ($ASSETTAG), but honestly, I never bothered. It's only good if all your PCs have an asset tag (most of ours don't). So we've been using other ways (like mac addys, we keep a database of such things)

yep. i noticed that the bios has an "asset tag", but that is always "none". the bios on the dell's always have a "service tag" number in there so its too bad wsname cant grab that from there.

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You can try compname.exe from here.

I have also created a small program with similar functionality - you can find it in this thread, however it will not (yet) join the computer to a domain, but it will provide a GUI which can be useful in some cases (or it can run on full unattended mode based on an INI file that you generate).

Hope this helps,

CF

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Hello again

Don’t be frightened of the syntax lines here is all you really need

(many other way to do this with automation - but this is the most simple)

1. Get the MAC address of each computer by opening a command prompt

- Open the start menu and select "run"

- Type "cmd" and then press OK

- Type "ipconfig /all"

* You get this:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : ami

Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetLink Gigabit Ethernet

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-1D-09-14-81-BF

DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.x.xxxPreferred)

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 12. juni 2008 12:35:46

Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 16. juni 2008 12:35:47

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.x.xx

DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.x.xx

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 1xxx.xxx.x.xx

xxx.xxx.x.xx

Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.x.xx

NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

-Note the MAC down and the name of the computer

2. Make a text file with you information in looking like this

00508B052AE8 = ComputerName1

005056C00008 = ComputerName2

005056C00001 = ComputerName3

3. Make sure that file is in you unattended installation and will be copied to example C:\WSNAME\

4. Now just make sure that one of the first things your computer does after starting the first time is to run the following:

( assuming that WSNAME.EXE is located in C:\WSNAME)

- "C:\WSNAME\wsname /RDF:"C:\WSNAME\YourMacFileNameHere.txt" /DFK:$MAC

Thats it!

Yes it takes time - but it WILL be worth the bother already after the second re-install if you have many computers to do at one time.

Having said all that - why not just use Ghost with a clever SYSPREP configuration ( you will still need the above steps, but it is much faster - I have tried both in a big scale scenario)

Kind Regards

Martin Andersen

Edited by prey
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Hello again

Dont be frightend of the syntax lines here is all you really need

(many other way to do this with autmation - but this is the most simple)

1. Get the MAC adress of each computer by opening a command prompt

- Open the start menu and select "run"

- Type "cmd" and then press OK

prey, can you expand and finish the post.

for all, fyi, i ran "wmic systemenclosure get serialnumber " and it retrieved the service tag. on dell's, i guess they are one in the same. how can i incorporate this in my unattended install using winnt.sif and get the service tag as the computer name? part of the unattended install is to repartition. again, thanks to all for all your help. im a long way from done, but getting there

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