We previously used just WDS to deploy our images. WDS was setup to request approval for new machines. We used the "Name and Approve" option to name the machines as we added them. If it was pre-existing, it would just use the existing computer name from AD. Then in our unattend.xml file we had Computername=%MACHINENAME%. This picked up the name we gave it during approval and set the computer name accordingly.

We are now implementing MDT to manage our images and drivers. But upon testing, we noticed it would assign random computer names. I went into the Unattend.xml for the deploy task sequence and added that value under Specialize > amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_neutral > Computername=%MACHINENAME%. But when we try applying the image, it errors out at that point of the install.

How can an MDT deployment be configured to leverage the pre-staged name?

Some additional info:

Error message during the imaging process:

Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass [specialize]. The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup].?

setuperr.log:

2014-07-22 14:02:13, Error [setup.exe] [Action Queue] : Unattend action failed with exit code 4 2014-07-22 14:02:13, Error [setup.exe] Execution of unattend GCs failed; hr = 0x0; pResults->hrResult = 0x8030000b