Changing Win2K Professional Computer Names

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We recently ghosted an image to install Windows 2000 Professional on 25 test workstations. After successfully deploying the image, we immediately faced the problem of how to change each computer's name from the image's original name to a unique name. We attempted to work around this problem by changing each computer's name on the Network Identification Properties dialog box. However, the systems rejected the new names regardless of whether we used Administrator usernames and passwords to make the change.

A few days later, we discovered that we should have selected WORKGROUP instead of DOMAIN during the name-change process. After we changed this selection and entered WORKGROUP in the Member of field, we could use an Administrator account to change each computer's name.

—Jian Chen
jche3@gmu.edu

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