0

Is there a command like the following:

wmic /node:"COMPUTERNAME" bios get serialnumber

But by MAC address instead of computer name?

A solution to that would be appreciated, although if you have suggestions for the bigger problem overall it would be greatly appreciated. I'm not very experienced at this.

The problem we're trying to solve is that we have computers with no OS on them, so when we connect them to ghost console by PXE we only see them by mac address.

We have an Excel sheet with serial numbers and our local identifiers to be used as the computer name (we don't have the mac addresses) so I want to get the serial number from X MAC address and then automatically assign the computer name to our sysprep (or give it a random name and then change it after install).

So if you have a better way to do this, and or suggestions to improve it please share. I'm restricted in what software I can use. We have Windows Server 2003 and the Norton Ghost suite. Were installing Windows XP images with Sysprep if that helps also.

Bill the Lizard
  • 352
  • 1
  • 7
  • 15
Guillaume
  • 103
  • 3
  • 1
    I'd suggest adding the MAC address to your Excel sheet, actually. A useful value to have in a machine tracking spreadsheet anyhow. – HopelessN00b Sep 11 '12 at 19:53

3 Answers3

1

FOG has a "hardware inventory" task which captures DMI info including serial numbers; hosts can be bulk-imported via CSV with hostname/MAC address, and tasks can be bulk-deployed.

Andrew
  • 8,002
  • 3
  • 36
  • 44
0

I don't know of any way to do what you're asking exactly. If you're willing to put some time into setting it up, you could PXE boot WinPE (available freely in the WinAIK) from Server 2003's WDS. Then use scripting (PowerShell for instance) in WinPE to get the MAC/Serial/Whatever, and pull the correct image.

While you're using WinPE, it comes with ImageX which can take and write images of Windows machines, no Ghost necessary, though if you've got the image already you'll probably want to keep it.

I'm really not sure how you'd rename the computer other than having the script that selects the image also write the computer's name to a file; then have a boot script rename the computer based on that file. The new tools for Windows don't much work on ancient XP installations (XP came out a decade ago).

Chris S
  • 77,945
  • 11
  • 124
  • 216
0

The computer will automatically get a random computer name if you use Computername=* in the sysprep file. Then you can use a vbscript or other tool to rename the computer after sysprep completes.

longneck
  • 23,082
  • 4
  • 52
  • 86