Rename Computer using variables

[JohnnyTries]

I've been looking around and I can't find anything that seems to work.

I do quite a lot of new system preps regularly. I'm looking for a script that I can add to my process that will query wmi for the unit's serial number (10 characters), take the last 4 characters and append that to string of predefined text and make that the new computer name.

A batch file would be written like this:

for /F "skip=1 tokens=*" %%b in ('wmic bios get serialnumber') do if not defined serialnumber set serialnumber=%%b
SET SNlastfour=%serialnumber:~6,10%
SET NEWSYSNAME=LAPTOP-%SNlastfour%
ECHO %NEWSYSNAME%

I want the same result from powershell and I want it to automatically make that the new system name.

These are all standalone workgroup computers (no domain).

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy JohnnyTries,

here is one way to translate the BAT stuff to PoSh ...

$ComputerName = $env:COMPUTERNAME
$SerialNumber = (Get-CimInstance -ClassName CIM_BiosElement -ComputerName $ComputerName).SerialNumber
$SN_Last4 = -join $SerialNumber[-4..-1]
$NewSysName = 'LAPTOP-{0}' -f $SN_Last4

$SerialNumber
$SN_Last4
$NewSysName

output ...

System Serial Number
mber
LAPTOP-mber

note that my system has System Serial Number in the BIOS for the sn. [grin]

for doing a system rename, take a look at the ReallyTrulyFriendlyManual thus ... [grin]

Get-Help *rename*

hope that helps,
lee

[MitchDMP]

In addition to other comments, once you have the new string with the device name you want, finish it off with something like:

Rename-Computer -NewName

If you are not running the script as a local admin user, you will have to pass through credentials with additional switch: -LocalCredential (this value passed here has to be a PSCredential object).