As an Intel NUC owner, you might have noticed that your NUC doesn’t come with the serial number hard-coded into the BIOS:
You can actually do this yourself with the Intel Integrator Toolkit. The site says support ended for it and it would be taken down in 2015, but here we are mid 2016 and it’s still available :). You get a list of client OS’s that support it but I installed it on Server 2016 TP 5 with no issues.
When you launch the application, you get a dialog box giving you some options. As you can see, you could run this from another PC entirely (but don’t – you need to be present to accept the config changes). If you’re running it from your NUC however, you can walk the wizard below to customize the BIOS and get right to it. (NOTE: You must have an active internet connection!)
Since I’ve picked to customize locally, the toolkit gives me a lot of options as you can see below.
In the SMBIOS menu, I simply input a value. I had the Serial Number from an old HP laptop I happened to have written down handy so I input that as the value . Just kidding, I picked Beaker. The toolkit allows you to paste in values, so you could create your own custom Serial Numbers and import them.
When you’ve finished your customization, you simply select “Save BIOS” from the ribbon. This will install the BIOS and add all your custom configurations.
YOU CANNOT DO THIS REMOTE – YOU NEED TO HAVE A KEYBOARD ATTACHED TO ACCEPT THE CONFIGURATION CHANGE (and a monitor to read the message, or just remember to press 9 on the keyboard). Don’t say I didn’t warn you 🙂
When the configuration is complete and you sign in again, you’re greeted with a dialog box from the toolkit letting you know your change was successful.
And of course, you can validate in PowerShell too!
BONUS FOR READING THIS FAR!
Another important feature to customize is the display image. I opted for a picture of Beaker because he’s my hero.
