Ghost: "Could Not generate a unique name for this computer"

[DaveP]

Ghost is giving the following error when I boot on RIS:

Could Not generate a unique name for this computer.

The error may also indicate that the computer naming policy used to create a unique computer name has reached the maximum number of combinations.

Google does not give me any helpful indications except to say:

Well you have a few choices:

1) visit the "remote" tab on your RIS server

(Users & computers>Properties)

and change the way your naming convention works (you may have entered something invalid).

2) use custom installation screens and enter your own names at RIS time.
see my site for changing the custom screens and the ability to use custom setup is a a group policy.

But looking at my server I can't see how to do this. Any ideas anyone?

It has been working for months: The problem arose today when I tried to image a station. I would like to get back to the situation where I was last week when I could image at will [i.e.: I would not like to make changes to my Ghost install, I would not like to go down the road of option 2 above]

Server: Windows Server 2003 Standard: Service Pack 1.

Ghost: Version 8.

[danrhodes]

Hi,

This looks like a tricky one, im not sure where that is either. When we ghost we go down the regular path of creating an image for a certain room as we try to keep all the room using same model kit.

Then once we have our image we use a boot disk to get to dos then use net use G: \\servername\sharename to connect to our share where we have the ghost files and the ghost executable, we can then ghost the machine.

When this is complete, after about 5 minutes we boot into windows and use NEWSid to change the workstation name and apply a new SID.

Dan

[DaveP]

Hi,

This looks like a tricky one, im not sure where that is either. When we ghost we go down the regular path of creating an image for a certain room as we try to keep all the room using same model kit.....

Dan

Hi Dan/All

Thanks but I think that I have not expressed myself fully. I want to image a station with an existing station image. Ghost is not letting me do that because the permutations of the Ghost administrator name are now exhausted. What I would like to do is configure Ghost in such a way that it will re-use administrator user names:

Administrator001, Administrator012, Administrator099,...

There must be a way of doing this but can I find it? Can I fk!

I want to avoid re-installing Ghost and RIS on the server because that will probably mean rebuilding the boot disks that I have so carefully created over the past few months [some of my NICs do not boot on the default Ghost option]

[pete]

When we had this issue we were running into the 15 byte limit on hostnames. AdministratorXX gives you 100 hosts before you run out of names and it won't reuse names that exist in AD.

Maybe adjust your ris naming convention to be SchoolInitialsXXX?

[jsnetman]

When RIS generates a name it adds it to AD in the computers OU and when it reaches 50 names I think it will not generate any more. You need to delete them every time it reaches 50.

[DaveP]

When RIS generates a name it adds it to AD in the computers OU and when it reaches 50 names I think it will not generate any more. You need to delete them every time it reaches 50.

That did the job. I am interested in the previous reply though:

"When we had this issue we were running into the 15 byte limit on hostnames. AdministratorXX gives you 100 hosts before you run out of names and it won't reuse names that exist in AD.

Maybe adjust your ris naming convention to be SchoolInitialsXXX?"

How would I enable this?

[pete]

In AD Users & Computers, right-click > properties on RIS server. Remote Install Tab > Advanced Settings > New Clients tab

Then edit the Client Computer naming format to whatever you want.

If you hit customize and type Test%# in the text field, you'll get Test+N as the name, so swap test for school initials (or room number). If we're imaging a new room, we normally change it to R32-%#.