Machine that are deployed via Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) are provided with  a computer name that’s provided during installation. By default this is a generated computer name similar to “MININT-79S84T2”.

Since the GUI of MDT is quite slow – and won’t show an hourglass –  I noticed people tend to click [Next] twice on the previous screen. As a result they automatically accept the generated computer name instead of providing their own. It’s more friendly to block the [Next] button on the Computer Details screen so users are force to provide a proper computer name.

Rules

Forcing users to provide a computername is easy. By changing the default computer name to a name that contains invalid characters the [Next] button is disabled (when an empty compute name is provided MDT will generate a MINIT-xxxxxxxx computer name). One way of providing a default computer name is in the Rules of the Deployment Shares.

• Open Deployment Workbench
• Open the Properties of the Deployment Share
• Select tab Rules
• Add the following parameter

[Default]
OSDComputerName=!Invullen

I’ve specificied the Dutch word “Invullen” which means “fill” (Google Translate)

• Click on [Apply]

There’s no need to update the deployment share, the rules file is read after the client connects to the deployment share.

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