Remote administration of initial computer operating system setup options is facilitated by systems and mechanisms that provide such initial setup options to a computing device during an earlier stage of the operating system setup. An administrator defines, in a profile, how such initial setup options are to be set and when an operating system is being set up it communicates with licensing servers to validate the copy of the operating system. If authorized, and if set up by an administrator, initial setup options are provided to the computing device at such an early stage of the operating system setup. Processes executing on the computing device then utilize software licensing application program interfaces to not only validate the copy of the operating system, but also to set the initial setup options in the manner pre-specified by the administrator. A customized directory service login user interface is one such initial setup option.