Powershell - Renaming Computer Name

Question

Hi All,

We have almost 10K+ machines, in which we wanted to change the computer name remotely using Powershell script.

We have a CSV file in which old name and new name should be replaced automatically. I tried below but its not working,

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73847619/renaming-computers-with-a-csv-file

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2243.how-to-rename-computers-using-powershell-and-a-csv-file.aspx

Kindly suggest the working script

Answer 1

I tried below but its not working,

What error did you get?

Try example 2 on this page to rename a single computer.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/rename-computer?view=powershell-5.1

For the -DomainCredential parameter, I would expect that you will need to pass a credential object. Something like this.

 $User = "NyDomain\Myadmin"
 $PWord = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "myadminpassword" -AsPlainText -Force
 $Credential = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $User, $PWord
 Rename-Computer -ComputerName Test1 -NewName Test001 -DomainCredential $Credential -force  

Answer 2

Test this with a few entries in the csv before you run it against all 10k.

$AllComputers = import-csv -Path C:\temp\Computers.csv
$User = "NyDomain\Myadmin"
$PWord = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "myadminpassword" -AsPlainText -Force
$Credential = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $User, $PWord 
foreach ($Computer in $AllComputers) {
     Rename-Computer -ComputerName $Computer.oldname -NewName $Computer.newname -DomainCredential $Credential -force 
}

If your PC's respond to a ping, then you might want to use a version that has more error handling. Some of your pc's will be shut off, so you will likely need to run the script multiple times. You could also regenerate the csv with names that got missed.

$AllComputers = import-csv -Path C:\temp\Computers.csv
$User = "NyDomain\Myadmin"
$PWord = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "myadminpassword" -AsPlainText -Force
$Credential = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $User, $PWord 
foreach ($Computer in $AllComputers) {
    $ping =  Test-NetConnection -ComputerName $computer.oldname  -ErrorAction Stop -WarningAction SilentlyContinue
    if ($ping.PingSucceeded) {
        try { 
            Rename-Computer -ComputerName $Computer.oldname -NewName $Computer.newname -DomainCredential $Credential -force -ErrorAction Stop 
             "{0} successfully renamed to {1}" -f $Computer.oldname,  $Computer.newname 
        } catch {
             "Unable to rename {0}, Error={1}" -f $Computer.oldname,$_
        }
    } else {
        "Unable to ping {0}" -f $Computer.oldname
    }
}

Answer 3

HI,

I tried both the commands, it throws an error as below,

Could you please advice

PS1.jpg