techie1982 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 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 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 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 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 Boot into a winpe disk and use regedit to mount the system hive. As long as the laptops are not encrypted.
mac_shinobi Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 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 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 I have all laptop names written in permanent marker under the batteries for this exact issue.
Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 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 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 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 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 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 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 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 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 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 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 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 Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 Ah, netsetup.log is the one. W7 only. It's on any network connection station.
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