When you’re preparing Windows laptops for your organisation, it can be quicker to add devices to Microsoft Intune by uploading the hardware hash directly during the Out of Box Experience (OOBE). This avoids the usual process of exporting the hash and manually uploading a CSV, giving you a faster and smoother build workflow.

Below is a clear walkthrough based on Microsoft’s guidance, along with notes that can help engineers during day to day deployments.

What the hardware hash actually is

The hardware hash is a unique ID that Windows collects from each device. It’s about identifying the device based on the components it has. Intune uses it to recognise a machine that is being enrolled through Windows Autopilot . Once the hash is registered, the laptop can pick up the right deployment profile as soon as it connects to the internet during setup.

Directly uploading the hardware hash during OOBE

Windows allows you to upload the hash straight to Intune as part of the first time setup. This is useful if you don’t have the device in your tenant yet and you want to speed up small scale rollouts.

Here are the steps to upload the hash:

  1. Start the device and move through the OOBE screens until you reach the sign in page.

  2. Open the command prompt by pressing Shift + F10 and run powershell.exe

  3. Run the following commands to start the Autopilot registration:

    [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Install-Script -Name Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo -Force

Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo -Online

  4. When prompted, sign in with an account that has permission to add devices to Microsoft Intune .

  5. The tool collects the hardware hash and sends it directly to Intune.

  6. Once complete, reboot the device to continue with OOBE.

Verifying the hash upload

After the device restarts, you may want to confirm that the hash has successfully appeared in your Intune tenant as a Windows Autopilot device.

To check the status:

  1. Open the Microsoft Intune admin centre .
  2. Go to Devices, then Windows and select Enrollment under Device onboarding. Next, select Devices under Windows Autopilot.
  3. Look for the device by its serial number. If the upload was successful, the device serial number will be listed there. If it’s not there, wait a few minutes and refresh.

Directly uploading the hardware hash during OOBE is a simple time saver for anyone involved in Windows builds or device onboarding. It reduces prep work and makes it easier to keep devices aligned with the organisation’s Intune setup.