Boswell's Q&A
RISky Business
Remote Installation Services allows for easy creation of computer names containing MAC addresses.
- By Bill Boswell
- 12/16/2003
Bill: I'm a network administrator at a high
school and I'm looking for a tool to automatically change a computer name
from a text list or database related to the MAC address with our Windows
2003 server and Remote Installation Services Server.
Met vriendelijke groet.
—Christian
Roosendaal, The Netherlands
Christian: Hoe gaat het ermee, Christian? (How's
it going?) Since you're using RIS, you don't need a database or text file
to create computer names that include the MAC address. You can use the
Custom Name feature in RIS.
For those who are not familiar with RIS, it allows you to take a desktop
(or server, for that matter) with a blank hard drive, boot to a Preboot
Execution Environment (PXE) that automatically downloads a set of installation
files stored on the RIS server, then either walk through the standard
OS installation or use an unattended installation file to automate the
process. You can also create a file-based “image” of a desktop
or server and use the image to do installations on slightly different
hardware, something that can be a challenge for sector-based image applications
such as Ghost or DriveImage.
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RIS doesn't have its own MMC console, so you'll have to use the Properties
window for the RIS server in Active Directory Users and Computers. Select
the Remote Install tab and click Advanced Settings.
Select the New Clients tab. Under Automatic Computer Naming, click the
combo box under Generate Client Computer Names Using.
The default naming format prefixes the MAC address with the letters NP.
A character-based prefix is important because TCP/IP utilities such as
ping do not work if the host name starts with a numeral. Click Advanced
to change the prefix. You can use your organization initials or even program
the Client Installation Wizard in RIS to ask the installer for a prefix.
Keep the overall name to something 15 characters or fewer to meet NetBIOS
naming restrictions.
Hope this helps. Gefeliciteerd met de geboorte van prinses Amalia...
P.S. I'd like to thank to my colleague Ron Beekelaar for the Dutch help.
Ron informs me that the crown prince of the Netherlands, Willem Alexander,
has a new baby. The last sentence translates, “Congratulations with
the birth of princess Amalia.”
About the Author
Contributing Editor Bill Boswell, MCSE, is the principal of Bill Boswell Consulting, Inc. He's the author of Inside Windows Server 2003 and Learning Exchange Server 2003 both from Addison Wesley. Bill is also Redmond magazine's "Windows Insider" columnist and a speaker at MCP Magazine's TechMentor Conferences.