Displaying OSDComputername in MDT WinPE background picture

One very appreciated feature in Configuration Manager 2012 when you integrate it with MDT is the background pictures showing OS deployment step, IP Address, MAC Address and so on to the end user och technician deploying the computer.

The first two steps are shown in WinPE only and under Computer Name in the background the generated Minint-3242 is displayed as computer name. I wrote a little powershell script which will simply write the OSDComputername variable to the registry in WinPE so we can read it from there with BGinfo and show both the WinPE name and the OSDComputername. It will look something like this:

I like the flexibility of running the scripts in the Task Sequence instead of modifying the Boot image so I run the script as a Run Powershell Script step in the Task Sequence. Start by doing the following:

1. Make sure you have the Powershell component included in the Boot Image for the script to be able to run.
2. Save a Powershell script with the following content.
   Param(
[string]$OSDcomputerName
)
New-Item -Path HKLM:\Software -Name OSD –Force
New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\OSD -Name OSDComputername -PropertyType String -Value $OSDcomputerName
3. Save this script in a folder and create a package in SCCM with the folder as source path so we can use it later in the Task Sequence.
4. In the Task Sequence before the step you are displaying in WinPe add the following step, select the package to run the script from and enter the %OSDComputername% in the Parameters to pass the OSDComputername variable to the script.
   
5. After that edit the STEP_02.BGI file by launching your MDT 2013 Toolkit package under \Tools\x86 in your package source directory  by launching Bginfo.exe from that directory.
6. In BGinfo select File, Open the STEP_02.BGI file, then you will see the information displayed in the background.
7. Select Custom and add the following value, the path should be HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\OSD\OSDComputerName
   
8. You will see a warning that the registry value doesn’t exist accept that and then we go on and edit the information displayed.
9. Edit the background to look something like this.
   
10. Then save the STEP_02.BGI file. If you are using the State Capture Step do the same with that step or save this one with the STEP_01.BGI filename instead.
11. Update the MDT 2013 Toolkit package so that the new .BGI files are updated on the DP’s and then you are good to go!

I haven’t tested it with MDT 2012 but I cannot see why it shouldn’t work.