Rename Computers in AD

[DUnnerstall]

My company has a customer that is changing the convention of computer names and will be changing some. There seems to be two ways to go about this: Renaming the computer account in Active Directory or deleting them and allowing the pc's to create new accounts when they log in. What would be the proper method, here?

Thanks in advance.

 

[58sniper]

You could script this with startup and/or boot scripts. The way I've done this for small numbers is just go to the machine and rename it.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[DUnnerstall]

It is for small numbers of machines. I will just delete the old computer account within AD. Thanks for the reply.

 

[58sniper]

Not what I would recommend. That does nothing for renaming machines. That just removes them from the domain. Now you could run into problems with domain profiles.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[DUnnerstall]

I should have said that I will rename the actual machine, first and then delete the old computer account within AD.

 

[intelwizrd]

When you rename a machine joined to AD it should rename the account in AD as well.

 

[DUnnerstall]

Good, thanks for the information.