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Renaming a Computer and Automating the Domain Join

Renaming a computer and joining it to an AD domain is very easy through the GUI. To automate the process, PowerShell and netdom are available, among other tools.

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Renaming a computer and joining it to an AD domain is very easy through the GUI. To automate the process, PowerShell and netdom are available, among other tools.

PowerShell

The “Rename-Computer” cmdlet can be used to rename a computer (locally or remotely) and restart it in the same step. A user with the appropriate permissions must be passed with the -LocalCredential or -DomainCredential parameters:

Rename-Computer -NewName <NAME> -DomainCredential <DOMAIN\User> -Restart -Force

Alternatively, you can rename the computer with Add-Computer and then join it to a domain (or optionally a workgroup):

Add-Computer -DomainName <DOMAIN> -NewName <NAME> -Force -Restart [-OUPath "<OU-PATH>"]

netdom

Of course, the process can also be done without PowerShell:

netdom renamecomputer %ComputerName% /NewName:<NAME> /userd:<USER> /passwordd:<PASSWORD> /reboot:5
netdom join %ComputerName% /domain:<DOMAIN> /userd:<USER> /passwordd:<PASSWORD> /reboot:5