Changing the SID on a Windows 2003 server

I have imaged countless computers over the years. In the past after the computer was imaged I would fire up the comptuer and run SysPrep to reset the SID (Computer Security Identifier). This would work fine but it would require me to go through the initial Windows setup again.

Recently I have been getting more involved with server virtualization using VMWare. I have created a couple of basic Windows 2003 virtual images. I knew when I deployed them I would need to reset the SID on the new virtual server.

After poking around I found NewSID on Microsoft's TechNet site. NewSID is a small executable that will reset your SID. It gives you the option to set a random SID, copy a SID from another comptuer or specify the SID. It will also allow you to change the current computer name.

My inital testing of it appears to be pretty positive. I have it on my basic virtual images. After I power up the virtual server for the first time I run NewSID. The basic virtual image network card is also setup to use DHCP so I wont run into IP conflicts.

I found NewSID by going to: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897418.aspx