Risk of Changin Computer Names

[sandylou]

I am not a hardware person but have been asked to rename all of the computer on a corporate LAN. What are the risks of doing this?

 

[cjelec]

Why???

For the love of sanity, why???

 

[sandylou]

Because the names are of actual people, some who don't work there anymore and they want to have it standardized with generic names. Seems reasonable, and probably the way it should have been set up initially. Therefore, I am wondering what the risks would entail for changing all of the machine names except for the server.

 

[franklin97355]

Domain? DNS? What type and what services are you running? We change the names of the computers that move in our district and don't have a problem MOST of the time.

The answer is "42"

 

[edfair]

Potentially some support issues on shared assets. Networked drives and printers for instance.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[CiscoRC]

First of all, you shouldn't have a Name on the Employees computer because you never know if that employee ever leaves the company. We always use WS 1, WS 2 so on...etc......

Besides, changing the name on the computer has nothing to do with hardware. Every employee have rights to a drive that was assigned in the Application Server or DNS Server, etc..there are so many way.

So typically for a New Employee they will have there own account and password, given the person some rights to a drive in the network path...I never ran into any problems whatsoever when changing computer names we keep it simple since the hardware like computers, monitor, etc....doesn't belong to the employee...they just work on there...you just got to do it smarter. Be efficients in every network settings as well with computers that uses names. Every computer uses WS1 then perhaps with some numbers along with it to be used to correct the computer problem using RDP...etc.....just my 2 cents...

***************
R. Corrigan Jr.
Network+, (working on CCENT+CCNA)

 

[cdogg]

As the last post suggests, changing the name won't have any impact on the hardware configuration or network access. Active Directory for the most part is usually setup to allow access by a user's login ID.

There is an option in Windows to disable the CTRL-ALT-DEL screen that you see when you first turn a PC on (assuming you are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP Pro). When you change the computer name, this setting often gets reset back to the default. Besides that, you shouldn't notice any other changes.

Of course, if any end-user computers are sharing files, the UNC path to that share will be affected...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[sandylou]

Thanks for everyones posts. The users who are there will keep there profiles, so the name of the machines won't be an issue. Thanks again!

sandylou

 

[kmcferrin]

If you haven't decided on a naming convention, I would highly recommend using the PCs serial number for the name. It makes inventory much easier, and the name should always be the same.

 

[ceh4702]

In our facility or organization we do this process called cascading. Often a PC is used for 3 years or so and then it may be passed on to someone else or for some other lower-end use. So we do not really consider a Username that valid. Instead each workstation has a Network Name issued by the Server in Novell Netware and it is usually a context. So a person could log in with a different context if needed. The network and user rights are determined on how they log in. If we want to really restrict access we do it by the hardware NIC Address to add additional security to limit an objects security to only one computer. I suppose someone really desparate could pull a nic card and put in another machine. However, with all the built-in NIC cards on motherboards that is getting a bit harder to fudge.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.