Interactive Rename and Domain Join Script Needed

19 Apr 2007 4:46 PM

sc

Background:
I have Vista installed as a Guest onto a Virtual PC 2007 VM. I want to
customize it, sysprep it and then distribute it to our QA team. In XP and 2K
Pro i was able to do this in such a way that the VM would launch mini setup
and prompt users for a Host Name the first time the VM was launched after
being distributed. All other settings were automated by the sysprep process
including Joining the VM to the 2k3 Domain after being given a Host Name.
Apparently the Vista Sysprep process has been altered in such a way that it
wants to join the domain BEFORE allowing the user to specify a host name.
Microsoft has confirmed this as the problem and tells me i must develope a
script to solve the issue. Unfortunately i know NOTHING about scripting.

What I Need: So what plan to do is have Sysprep auto assign a hostname and
auto join a workgroup. I then would like to have a script auto run after the
first auto logon that prompts the user to rename the Host Name and then auto
Joins our domain with that newly specified hostname.

Is this possible?

20 Apr 2007 11:18 AM

Jeremy

There are command line utilities you could use to do this. Here is an example:

SET /P NEWNAME="Please enter the new computer name: "
NETDOM RENAMECOMPUTER %COMPUTERNAME% /NewName:%NEWNAME%
NETDOM JOIN %COMPUTERNAME% /Domain:mydomain.local /UserD:DomainUser
/PasswordD:Domainpassword

You'll have to download netdom in the Windows XP SP2 support tools.
Unfortunately I have just found and article saying that Vista has a bug with
NETDOM. Fortuantely there is also a private hotfix you can get from MS
Support.

See this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932173

Cheers,
Jeremy.
Show quote

"sc" wrote:

> Background:
> I have Vista installed as a Guest onto a Virtual PC 2007 VM. I want to
> customize it, sysprep it and then distribute it to our QA team. In XP and 2K
> Pro i was able to do this in such a way that the VM would launch mini setup
> and prompt users for a Host Name the first time the VM was launched after
> being distributed. All other settings were automated by the sysprep process
> including Joining the VM to the 2k3 Domain after being given a Host Name.
> Apparently the Vista Sysprep process has been altered in such a way that it
> wants to join the domain BEFORE allowing the user to specify a host name.
> Microsoft has confirmed this as the problem and tells me i must develope a
> script to solve the issue. Unfortunately i know NOTHING about scripting.
>
> What I Need: So what plan to do is have Sysprep auto assign a hostname and
> auto join a workgroup. I then would like to have a script auto run after the
> first auto logon that prompts the user to rename the Host Name and then auto
> Joins our domain with that newly specified hostname.
>
> Is this possible?
>