Yes, you have been reading right, no more hardware hash pain for registering new device in Autopilot.
If you are managing an Intune environment and using Autopilot, you already know that every new device must be registered in Autopilot using the hardware hash; which is painful if you can’t get this information from the manufacturer.
Well, good news, Microsoft has been updating Autopilot in a v2 version (different from the original Autopilot).
This new Autopilot v2 does not require anymore the hardware hash.
This new version, called Autopilot device preparation, has few requirements and limitations:
- Windows 11 22H2 or 23H2 with KB5035942 (March 2024)
- Device will be Entra ID Joined device only, no hybrid device joined currently
- Device must not be already registered as Autopilot. Otherwise, the Autopilot ‘v1’ profile takes precedence.
You can use Corporate identifiers for Windows devices (serial number, manufacturer, model) (see Add corporate identifiers to Intune | Microsoft Learn); this helps restricting the new Autopilot experience to kick in.
The new Autopilot experience is available under the Devices\Enrollment blade from the Intune portal
The Device preparation policy will set the below:
- The deployment mode set to Single user
- The deployment type set to User Driven; not white glove deployment
- Very limited OOBE to timeout, error message or allow multiple attempts and link to diagnostic; you can not configure the keyboard, EULA, privacy… settings
- Defined the mandatory applications and scripts to be deployed during the Autopilot phase
While this is a good news the hardware hash requirement is being lift, this seems this is a quite early version.