MDT Naming Trick - Show Machine's Existing Name

MDT Pre-Populate Name Trick

You ever had it when a machine needs to be rebuilt because it's either crashed completely or is suffering issues that you know, deep down in your technical heart, a rebuild will sort it all out.

So what do you do?

You press that magical network boot key, PXE boot that machine and start the MDT process.  Fantastic, you the go through the wizards to eventually get to the "Computer Name" stage where it then prepopulates the name with a MiniNT name and you go.. hmm.. bugger what the name of the machine again?

You look for a sticker, which has obviously fallen off or worn away, you think i'll need to reboot to get to the login screen to find the name there.. which isn't an option if the machine is totally broke.

Wouldn't it be nice to have the machine put in its actual, existing name in place of that MiniNT name, still editable if required, but there for a reference at least.  Well you can, using some minor trickery and awesomeness.

Thanks to Michael Klinteberg from Technet forums, a simple script copied into the Scripts folder in your deploymentshare and two lines added to your customsettings.ini file will give you the desired effect.

Copy the below script into notepad and save it as "UserExit.vbs"

Function UserExit(sType, sWhen, sDetail, bSkip)
 oLogging.CreateEntry "entered UserExit ", LogTypeInfo
 UserExit = Success
End Function

Function GetOfflineComputername()
On Error Goto 0

 If oEnvironment.Item("OSVERSION")="WinPE" Then
  Dim CompName : CompName = ""
  Dim ret, sOldSystem : sOldSystem = ""
  For Each drv In Array("C", "D", "E", "F")
   If ofso.FileExists(drv & ":\windows\system32\config\system") Then
    sOldSystem = drv & ":\windows\system32\config\system"
    Exit For
   End If
  Next
  oLogging.CreateEntry "Mounting Offline registry " & sOldSystem, LogTypeInfo
  ret = oShell.Run ("reg load HKLM\z " & sOldSystem, 0, True)
  If ret = 0 Then
   CompName = oShell.RegRead("HKLM\z\ControlSet001\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Hostname")
   If CompName <> "" Then
    oLogging.CreateEntry "Found old computername '" & CompName & "'", LogTypeInfo
   Else
    oLogging.CreateEntry "Old computername name could not be found", LogTypeWarning
   End If
  Else
   oLogging.CreateEntry "Could not mount offline registry " & sOldSystem, LogTypeWarning
  End If
  oShell.Run "REG UNLOAD HKLM\Z", 0, True  
 Else
  CompName = oShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%Computername%")
 End If

 GetOfflineComputername = CStr(CompName)
  
End Function