September 8, 200421 yr I am trying to create an 'unattended' installation of XP/Office2003 and some other components and something dawned on me. I'm an IT at a pretty good size firm and I was wonder about computer names. We have over 100 workstations (laptop and desktop) as well as 11 servers. My question is when I make an 'unattended' installation cd, how do I make it for multiple computer names. What I mean is that the need for each workstation varies and they will never be setup at the same time. The only time they are rebuilt is when someone kills it or a hd fails. I can't leave a computer name out because I'm designing the 'unattended' installation to join our domain automatically.Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
September 8, 200421 yr If your installing XP I've noticed on my single box install that whatever name I choose the setup will modify it to a name the includes the first four letters of my choice and then some cryptic babble made up by setup. I suspect this will happen on a multiple install that your describing and I suspect it is based on the hardware signature (activation code) that each system produces during setup. For example I typed in Four-SATA and it was changed to "Four-ygdtwe0p6s".
September 8, 200421 yr read WINNT.SIF and search for ComputerNames.You could specify as many names as you want, and if SETUP finds the name already exists on the network, it should automatically shift to the next name.
September 8, 200421 yr Author Thank you for the speedy response. Most of the computers here have the same name as the person using them. It makes it easier to find the computer that has a viurs or has something else going on with it. I'll try the suggested route.
September 8, 200421 yr Keep winnt.sif on a floppy. Insert the floppy with a changed winnt.sif each time, and boot-up from CD - it will read all winnt.sif details from floppy.Or if you use RIS, it is simpler to assign names after making associations to the NIC's MAC id.
September 8, 200421 yr also handy is this tool i made (still needs a bit tweaking and bugfixing):http://home.hccnet.nl/mvanrijnen/pages/useradd
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