Recipe16.17.Creating a Computer Account

Recipe 16.17. Creating a Computer Account

Problem

You want to create a computer account.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

From the Administrative Tools, open the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in.
If you need to change domains, right-click on Active Directory Users and Computers in the left pane, select Connect to Domain, enter the domain name and click OK.
In the left pane, browse to the parent container for the computer, right-click on it, and select New
Enter the name of the computer and click OK.

Using a command-line interface

Use the following command to create a computer account in Active Directory:

> dsadd computer "<ComputerDN>" -desc "<Description>"

Using VBScript

' This code creates a computer account in Active Directory. ' ------ SCRIPT CONFIGURATION ------ strBase = "<ParentComputerDN>"  ' e.g., cn=Computers,dc=rallencorp,dc=com strComp = "<ComputerName>"      ' e.g., joe-xp strDescr = "<Description>"      ' e.g., Joe's Windows XP workstation ' ------ END CONFIGURATION ---------     ' ADS_USER_FLAG_ENUM Const ADS_UF_WORKSTATION_TRUST_ACCOUNT = &h1000     set objCont = GetObject("LDAP://" & strBase) set objComp = objCont.Create("computer", "cn=" & strComp) objComp.Put "sAMAccountName", strComp & "$" objComp.Put "description", strDesc objComp.Put "userAccountControl", ADS_UF_WORKSTATION_TRUST_ACCOUNT objComp.SetInfo Wscript.Echo "Computer account for " & strComp & " created"

Discussion

Creating a computer account in Active Directory is not much different from creating a user account. In the CLI and API solutions, I set the description attribute, but it is not mandatory. The only mandatory attribute for computer accounts is sAMAccountName, which should be set to the name of the computer with $ appended (e.g., joe-wxp$).

These solutions simply create a computer account. You'll still need to join a computer with the same name as the computer account to a domain as I describe in Recipe 16.18.