I am Trying to have my unattend.xml file make the hostname of the new image to be the Serial of the BIOS. I honestly don't care how or what language it's done in. Reading I have come this far but I am stuck.

• Change Dell Laptop Serial Number
• My Laptop Serial Number

I Get this error

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4 Answers

$Serial does not return anything until you assign it a value. You can perform a WMI call to get the serial number.

Then your Rename-Computer cmdlet should work fine (you do not need the parenthesis around $Serial, though it won't hurt anything to have them there). For that matter, the only thing you need to supply, if you are renaming the local computer, is the new name. So this should work:

Since you tagged vbscript, here is a untested vbs solution. This allows you to rename computers remotely. You can modify it and have it execute after imaging is done or on first reboot.

I love One-Liner (probably because i use it from an batch....)

powershell rename-computer (gwmi win32_bios).serialnumber

Of course it needs an Boot.

Change Dell Laptop Serial Number

Since the original error stipulated that a serial number had been passed from the GWMI query to the restart-computer cmdlet, I suspect the command is being performed without the proper credentials. As such, you may try adding -localcredential with a known local machine administrative user/pass.

You will be prompted for credentials. There are various other script examples if you prefer automating the passing of credentials to the cmdlet.

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Whenever I use the command line below

wmic bios get serialnumber

It outputs the BIOS Serial number with my laptop.

My Laptop Serial Number

However, I've tried that command line to get BIOS serial number with my company's PC, I didn't work a bit.

Here was the output:

So how can I get the BIOS Serial with that problem...

1 Answer

So how can I get the BIOS Serial with that problem.

You do not. You already provided your own answer, however the hardware you have has no serial number. People either did not set one at manufacture, or they forgot about it.

This is sadly quite common.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged command-linebioswmic or ask your own question.