Hello!

I am working in a Windows Server 2003-based Active Directory environment. There are approximately 150 workstations connecting to this network, all running Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 under a volume license. We also have a volume licenses to Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 for use in creating desktop images that can be quickly and easily deployed to the workstations.

For the most part, everything works fine in this scenario. We use PXE for doing a network boot into the Ghost client software, connect to the GhostCast Server, and push out the machine images. Using the Microsoft Sysprep and Setup Manager tools, we are able to automate most all of the post-deployment configuration work. However, the one thing that is still confounding me is each computer's name.

We use a specific naming convention on our network that makes management easier. Therefore, each machine has a specific name that must be assigned to it. So far, the only options I have found are either to not specify the machine name in advance, which causes WIndows to prompt for it after deployment; to allow random name generation which does not match our naming convention; or to specify the machine name during the Setup Manager process, which requires a separate configuration file be manually selected for each and every machine.

I have looked into using UDF files to specify per-machine paramaters, but everything I've looked at seems to suggest that you have to specify the options set that you wish to use as part of the setup command line. This poses two problems in that it takes us back to manually entering data for each machine and also that we are using Ghost deployments, not command line-based Windows setups.

My ideal situation would be one in which I could create a list of all of the computers on their network, indexed by some unique identifier such as MAC address or machine serial number, which the setup process would then reference to determine which machine it was running on and assign the computer name appropriately. However, there may be a better way than that which I am not thinking of. The ultimate goal is simply to be able to roll out Ghost images to the end user PC's without requiring any user intervention during the setup process.

Can anyone offer suggestions on how best to accomplish this?

Thanks!

- Tom