Renaming A Computer Over The Network

How many times have you deployed a machine and then had to change the name after going back to your comfy chair? It's happened a couple times to me this week, so I thought I'd post a quick how-to on using the Windows XP Support Tools to rename computers across your domain. 

If you don't have the Windows XP Support Tools yet, you can download them here ->
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=49ae8576-9bb9-4126-9761-ba8011fabf38&displaylang=en

	Open A Dos Box After you've installed the Windows XP Support Tools, open up a command window.
	Run Netdom So, let's say you have a computer named wrongname on domain "mydomain" and want it to be renamed to computer1 with admin account "administrator", then reboot after 60 seconds (with warning to user). You would use the following command in a cmd window: netdom renamecomputer wrongname /newname:computer1 /userD:mydomain\administrator /passwordd:* /usero:administrator /passwordo:* /reboot:60 That's all one line, in case you're wondering.

Conclusion

If you don't want to go to the user's desk and change the name yourself, you can use this command line tool to do the work for you. Keep in mind their machine will reboot in 60 seconds after the command is completed. The support tools have all kinds of groovy apps to help you stay in your chair.