Deployment Solution

In DS 6.x we had computers auto rename to serial number and then join domain which worked well for us. 

The rename to serial doesn't seem as simple in 7.1 (though supposedly not impossible).

7.1 users out there, how are you naming your PCs during the imaging process?  If anyone has a post image step to rename to serial that would share that info, that would be great.

Thanks!

Hi Sally, did you get any answer to this question?  I have the same issue.

Thanks, Rich

Rich - I haven't, but I did find a utility called wsname.exe that does rename to serial (at least on the Dells I tested iwth).. so I guess a post image step could be calling that utility to get us by.

Hi Sally,

I found a solution, but it's essentially the same as your approach.  On Symc support site there's a HOWTO with some sample tasks - one of which is a VBScript that will do token replacement on an arbitrary text file (see http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO44396&key=55263&actp=LIST).  

I push my image with a custom unattend.xml sysprep file.  I replaced @compName with %SERIALNUMBER%.  After pushing an image (and whilst still in automation before reboot), I execute the VBScript against c:\windows\panther\unattend.xml which replaces the %SERIALNUMBER% with the Altiris generated token.  Then do the reboot, let Win 7 do it's setup and viola - computer ID is the serial number.

AFAIK from reading the forum, this seems to be the way most people are doing it, but I think there's no real difference from the way you've found.

Anyway, thought I'd post my findings. 

Rich

nevermind i got it working, thanks again