I'm in the process of setting up Windows 7 deployment through PXE boot, with Microsoft SCCM 2012. The imaging itself works very well, but I have a question about the logic behind PXE deployments.

My setup is the following:

• My Windows 7 deployment task sequence is deployed to the unknown computers group. (not required, press F12 to start installing)
• OSDComputerName variable is also set on the unknown computers group, so unknown computers that are being imaged will prompt for a pc name.
• The computer then becomes known in SCCM and is added to the correct collection(s).

But if I want to reïnstall windows on a known computer things are different:

I can do a required deployment of the imaging task sequence to the collection of computers. Then windows installs through PXE, without any human interaction, keeping the original computer name.

But because the initial deployment was not required, the "required PXE deployment" flag is not set. So as soon as I add a new computer to a collection with a required PXE deployment, it will start to reïnstall windows again.

I can also deploy the imaging task sequence to the new unknown computers as required, so the flag gets set initially. But then it does not prompt for a computer name. (and it generates a name like MININT-xxx) Which is also sort of what I want. Because when i want to re-install a machine, I want it to install without interaction.

How can I solve this?