How to find the name of a computer that wont boot

[techie1982]

Hi

 

I have 4 laptops on a Vanilla Windows 7 network that won't boot into Windows. I have tried SafeMode as well and won't even let me in that way. Is there a tool/live cd I can run to find the computer name, so that I can rebuild it with the same name as before?

 

Regards

 

techie1982

[FN-GM]

Do you have any kind of inventory? You could PXE boot and get the MAC address then compare that to an inventory? Maybe you have SCCM, Spiceworks or DHCP to look up the name via the MAC in?

[free780]

Boot into a winpe disk and use regedit to mount the system hive. As long as the laptops are not encrypted.

[mac_shinobi]

Not able to find the computer name in AD? If you are giving it the same name, surely would be better to remove existing computer accounts out of AD first before re imaging anyway ?

[fairm010]

I have all laptop names written in permanent marker under the batteries for this exact issue.

[Little-Miss]

I'm probably talking complete nonsense, it's been a long week, but could you hook the hdd up to a caddy and load the other hive up in regedit on a working machine and find it in there....

 

Although that does sound a faff to do....

[Arthur]

I would do what @FN-GM suggested and lookup the name based on the MAC address in DHCP.

 

I'm probably talking complete nonsense, it's been a long week, but could you hook the hdd up to a caddy and load the other hive up in regedit on a working machine and find it in there.

Your idea would definitely work.

 

The PowerShell script below could be used to quickly lookup the computer name in the registry after the HDD has been connected to another Windows PC.

 

#Requires -RunAsAdministrator

reg load "HKLM\_SYSTEM" "[color="#FF0000"]D[/color]:\Windows\system32\config\system" | Out-Null

(Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\_SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\ComputerName\ComputerName -Name ComputerName).ComputerName

reg unload "HKLM\_SYSTEM" | Out-Null

[FN-GM]

Not able to find the computer name in AD? If you are giving it the same name, surely would be better to remove existing computer accounts out of AD first before re imaging anyway ?

 

Why? I would have thought it was better to leave them. That way they have the correct groups added and are in the correct OU already.

[synaesthesia]

A lot of faff here! Boot with any live CD. Go to c:\windows\debug and open one of the text files in there... thing it's setup.txt or similar?

[computer_expert]

A lot of faff here! Boot with any live CD. Go to c:\windows\debug and open one of the text files in there... thing it's setup.txt or similar?

 

it depends - my home machine has 4 files, none of which have a hostname in. On another machine I found a hostname inside netsetup.log (but netsetup.log wasn't present on all machines though)

[free780]

Winpe

Regedit

Close click hkey_local_machine software

File>load hive

C:\windows\system32\config\system

Give it a name

Under currentcontrolset1 find computer name

Expand the key.

[synaesthesia]

Ah, netsetup.log is the one. W7 only. It's on any network connection station.