How to set the computer name. Renaming a local account

Computer names on a TCP/IP network

It is more convenient for a person to work with a computer name than to remember the numbers that make up its IP address. On a TCP/IP network, computers can have two names: the NetBIOS name of the computer and the host name (DNS name). Typically the hostname and NetBIOS name are the same, and this is what you should aim for. But fundamentally these names can be different. For example, the NetBIOS name is limited to 15 characters, but the host name can be given a longer name. Or, if when creating a domain you try to give it a name that matches the name of the future controller, the installation program will prompt you to choose a different name for this host.

The hostname is made up of several names separated by a dot, for example: . The first group of characters from the left (before the dot), in in this example this www is the proper name of the computer. Next group characters - from dot to dot - this is the name of the group of computers to which this system belongs. Next group characters - name groups of computers, which in turn belong to groups of computers whose names are located to the left. This chain you can continue as long as you like. For convenience, they are usually limited to three or four groups of characters.
In practice, a domain name is understood as the entire group of characters to the right of the computer name. Depending on how many groups of characters are included in a domain name, domains of the first, second, third, etc. levels are distinguished.

Note
When you create a new Windows domain, you should not give it a first-level domain name. In this case, some restrictions apply, which can be found in the database Microsoft data. It is advisable to give the domain Windows name type.local.

The rightmost group of characters in the name (up to the first dot) is called the first-level domain, the second from the right is the second-level domain, then comes the third-level domain, etc.

Note
Sometimes the term FQDN is used - fully qualified domain name (usually this abbreviation is used without translation; the Russian term sounds like the full name of the host). FQDN refers to the complete chain of system names: from the host name to the name root domain. To emphasize that the full name is meant, a dot is placed at the end of it, which is considered to be the name of the root domain. For example, the FQDN for a Web site would be written as follows: www.site. (the last dot is included in the name).

Hostnames within a Windows broadcast domain must be unique. If you try to start a system that has the same name as another running computer, you will receive an error message.

Internet Domain Names

On the Internet, the uniqueness of assigned names is monitored by the organization (individual) responsible for the domain within which the name is issued. When assigning names, the principle is used: if a given domain name is free, then it can be obtained. Purchasing a domain name is payable service In addition, the name must be renewed annually. It is almost impossible to “take away” an issued domain name.
This method guarantees the uniqueness of the computer's fully qualified domain name and at the same time requires checking for the uniqueness of the desired name in only one place.
Organizations and individuals Those who register domain names for themselves usually try to create a domain name that is easy for users to remember, often using the legal name.
There are two directions for creating domain names. One is based on a geographical principle (each country has its own first-level domain, within which all computer names are created), the second is based on the type of activity of the organization. In Russia, the “geographical” domain is called ru.
The functions of technical support for the registration system and DNS servers of the ru zone are carried out by the Russian Research Institute of Development public networks(Ros-NIIROS).

Correlation of domain names and computer IP addresses

Every computer in global network must have a unique IP address. Without such an address, work is simply impossible. It is not necessary to have a domain name to work. If necessary, you can type the IP address in the address lines of programs designed to work on the Internet.
A domain name can exist, but not have an IP address (of course, working with such nodes is impossible). This situation may arise if, for example, an organization has previously registered a domain name for itself, but does not have currently any resources on the Internet.
One domain name can have several IP addresses. This is usually practiced on popular Internet sites, which allows using special solutions distribute the load from one computer to several. Similarly, several domain names can correspond to one IP address (for example, when several WWW servers corresponding to different organizations are located on a computer).
The IP addresses associated with a given domain name may change. For example, an organization moves or changes Internet provider. Keeping the domain name “for yourself” allows you not to worry that similar cases you will have to bear the costs of “promoting” the new name.

Domain Name Servers (DNS)

NetBIOS computer name is determined during installation operating system. By default, this same name will be used as the hostname when obtaining an IP address, although in Windows you can assign different names NetBIOS and DNS.
To search for a computer in local network By name, broadcast queries were previously used: the system sends a request to determine the name to all stations and waits for a response. Increasing network size forces us to abandon this method, since it leads to a significant increase in such broadcast traffic. IN distributed networks based on the TCP/IP protocol are used for name resolution special servers- DNS servers ( Domain Name System).
DNS servers provide a domain name upon request based on an IP address, and vice versa. Therefore, specifying the DNS server address is one of the basic TCP/IP protocol settings required to work on the Internet.
The DNS server address is usually reported automatically when the IP protocol is initialized. DNS server names are reported by DHCP servers. Typically, multiple DNS servers are specified so that the system can use a second server if the primary DNS is temporarily unavailable.

Name Registration Service Windows network(Windows Inter-networking Name Server, WINS) was used to register network names of computers on local networks before Windows 2000. The WINS service made it possible to correctly resolve names in networks with routers.

Note
Although currently a WINS server in local networks is required by stations on Windows based 3.1/9x/NT, however also part modern services uses NetBIOS. For example, some MS Exchange Server features use NetBIOS queries. Therefore, it is advisable to keep WINS as part of the local network.

When starting to work on the network, the computer “tells” the WINS server its name and IP address. These parameters are entered into a special database and are used to search for a computer name based on its address, and vice versa. Therefore, to find out the name of a computer on the local network (or its address), it is enough to form a request to WINS.
The WINS address is usually automatically provided to clients by a DHCP server when receiving TCP/IP parameters.

Static naming

In a small local network to set the match " IP address - network name" you can use static records created manually. This allows the network to function without the use of WINS, DHCP servers, etc.
If Windows cannot dynamically determine hostnames (IP addresses), then the system uses the contents hosts files, networks and Imhosts. The first two files represent regular list ratios" IP address - name" in forward and reverse order:

The Imhosts file is compatible with Microsoft LAN Manager 2.x and is used to load special NetBIOS names (specifying the domain server, application servers, etc.). The files are located in the folder %systemroot%/system32/drivers/etc (for Windows 9x-in Windows folder). When installing the system, examples are usually created (with the extension sam), based on which the necessary files should be edited.
You can change files anywhere text editor, however, this requires administrator rights. The entry must start at the first position of the line, and columns can be separated by any number of spaces. The operation is labor-intensive, especially when adding new computers to the network, since this will require making changes to these files for all systems already on the network.

Name resolution sequence

In practice, you may encounter the fact that some systems “see” one number of computers on the network, while others see another. Some computers work successfully on the network, while others display a message that the network cannot be logged on because the system cannot find the domain controller. These situations are due to the different name resolution methods used.
Name resolution is used to find a computer (determine its IP address) by its name and obtain information about network services, for example, find out the addresses of domain controllers.
The main difference between different name resolution methods Windows versions is that systems prior to Windows 2000 used NetBIOS for name resolution, while Windows 2000 and older (Windows 200x/XP) require DNS information.
If a name needs to be resolved, an attempt is first made to search for it in local resources. First of all, there is a local name cache that all systems create to improve performance (NetBIOS name cache or DNS name cache). If desired name the computer is not found, the system tries to find it in the host files. If this attempt is unsuccessful, then systems running Windows 2000 and older contact the DNS server defined in their TCP/IP protocol settings. network adapter. If DNS server is unavailable or could not return the name, then attempts stop and it is reported that the name was not found.
Windows 9x and Windows NT 4.0 systems either broadcast name resolution requests or contact a WINS server, depending on their NetBIOS settings. DNS information used only if this is explicitly specified in the network adapter settings.

Note
If the use of NetBIOS over TCP/IP is disabled by system settings, then Windows 9x and Windows NT 4.0 will not be able to correctly resolve names of other computers.

Using DNS, Windows 200x/XP based systems also find the location of services. For example, the address of a domain controller can be recognized by the name _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs., the address of the Gatekeeper service (used when transmitting IP telephony, video conferencing, etc. over communication channels) is determined by the results of a request to the name Q931 ._tср. etc.
When using NetBIOS, stations register on the network by reporting their name and the names of the services that are running on them. These names can be viewed, for example, using the nbtstat -a command.

Proxy

Another term that you will come across constantly when working on the Internet is a proxy server.
Practice shows that some information is particularly popular: many users request it, sometimes even more than once a day. To reduce the load on networks, so-called proxy servers began to be installed. The proxy server automatically stores all information passing through it for a certain period of time. If the proxy server detects a request for data that is already available in a copy, then this copy will be sent to the user.
In addition, turning on a proxy server in your Internet browser settings can improve your browsing speed. This is due to the fact that many files no longer have to be received from the Internet: the speed of downloading files from a proxy server, which is usually located “nearby” user computer, higher speed of receiving data from remote hosts.
The parameters of properly designed pages of information sites should indicate the possibility of caching data on proxy servers, as well as the “validity period”. It happens that developers do not specify such values and the proxy server uses its default settings: in this case, it may provide the user with outdated data. To refresh the page and download the latest data, use the Refresh command in the viewer menu. In this case, the proxy server must request data from the Internet.
Working through a proxy server is not an obligation, but a right. The proxy server is specified in the settings of programs that browse the Internet (for example, Opera, IE, etc.). Its use allows you to increase the speed of your work on the Internet and reduce the cost of paying for Internet access.
In order to improve the efficiency of working through a proxy server, you should provide sufficient hard drive for storing data received from the Internet. Typically, when estimating cache sizes, you should focus on the volume of monthly traffic of the organization served by such a server.
The figure shows a diagram of proxy server cache usage based on monthly work results. While specific metrics will vary from organization to organization, it is clear that running a proxy significantly reduces an organization's Internet traffic.

Auto-detection of proxy servers

Workstations can be configured to automatic detection and use of a proxy server. There are various mechanisms by which LAN clients can receive necessary settings for automatic configuration of work through a proxy server. Yes, in the domain Windows settings Proxy servers can be distributed through Group Policy.

For automatic configuration The parameters for using a proxy server are intended for a special scenario. By default, such a script should be named wpad.dat and published to HTTP protocol on the server with domain name W.P.A.D.
The proxy auto-discovery script is written in a macro programming language. If necessary, it can be adjusted. For example, if there are two Internet access points, the script may contain functions for randomly using one channel or another with a predetermined weighting coefficient (when working with an array of proxy servers). If you need to work with some Internet servers only through one channel, then this feature can be implemented precisely through modification of this script.

Note
Please note that if the browser receives the parameters of a non-functioning proxy server from this script, it will not be possible to browse the Internet.

If you have a similar scenario (and it, for example, is created automatically when installing the Microsoft ISA Server proxy server), then you need to create an entry on the DNS server that would point to this host. Script parameters can also be communicated DHCP server: to do this you need to add a new one standard parameter in the Predefined Options menu of the DHCP server management snap-in with number 252 and set its value equal to the URL of the auto-configuration script. For example:

http://wpad.:8080/wpad.dat

The user selects the computer name during the installation of the operating system and it can be changed at any time. It is intended to identify a computer on the network and should not contain more than fifteen characters, spaces and special characters, for example, If you are puzzled by the question of how to find out the computer name, then you should refer to the system settings. To do this, you can use our simple instructions, which are offered below.

How to find out the computer name

First, you should go to the main “Start” menu, where you will find the “Control Panel” item. You should find the “Performance and Maintenance” category, where you then need to click on the “System” shortcut.

After opening System Properties, you can see the name personal computer. This component can be called not only in this way, but also in another way. You need to open the “Start” menu, where you can find the “My Computer” shortcut. This shortcut can be located directly on your desktop, which allows you to access it much more fast access. You need to click on this shortcut right click to select “Properties”. In the system properties window that opens, you need to go to the special “Computer name” tab, where in a special field called “ Full name"The name that was assigned to your computer during the installation of the operating system will be indicated.

You can change it; to do this, on the same tab you should find the “Change” button, after which another window will open in which you can set a different name for the computer. This is one way to find out the computer name.

Now you should know that if you intend to change the computer name, then you should not make it very long, but you must remember that there should not be another computer with the same name on your local network. This could become network interaction. When the new name is entered and you click OK, all changes will be saved.

If you are interested in another way to find out the computer name, then you can do this using the special “System Information” component. You can call it through simple manipulations. To do this, you must open the Run option in the Start menu. IN empty line open window you should enter msinfo32.exe, and then press “Enter”. In the new one, you should highlight the line containing the inscription “System Information”, which you can see on the left side of the window. In the “Element” group, located on the right side of the window, there is a position “System name”, and in the “Value” field there is the name of the personal computer that interests you so much.

How to find out the computer name on the network

On a local network, each computer has its own own address online. Such a machine identification system is almost the basis laid down in the basic components of the functioning of networks. When using operating system tools and third party programs you can determine the name of each individual PC by its IP.

Let's figure out how to do this. To obtain information about the network status, you can use special program ping. It is designed to determine the health of the network and the time that must be spent on transmitting packets along a dedicated client-server route and back. If you use parameter a, then latest versions commands will be able to determine the computer name by IP. Let's figure out how to find out the computer name by IP? To do this, you should enter the command “ping - a 20.0.0.30”, which contains the conditional IP of a certain remote PC on your local network. Now the system will display information about the node, including its name.

You must understand that in determining the computer name different ways there shouldn't be any problems.

Isn’t it a familiar situation: between two meetings or in the process of making a decision? current problems The firewall receives a notification that a computer with IP address 10.15.97.12 is sending an uncontrolled flow of packets to the NetBIOS ports of hundreds of other computers. Perhaps the computer is infected with a worm, and you need to ask the computer owner to immediately disconnect it from the network. At first glance, this can be done quickly, but when minutes count, even simple steps difficult to complete without errors. Let's look at how naming conventions and IP standards can help you quickly identify a system, and then compare the methods for converting IP addresses into names of two well-known Windows tools.

Studying subnets

When considering networks, it is useful to follow the engineers in thinking about octets. As an enterprise grows, one flat subnet is replaced by several subnets representing security zones or offices. A structured and predictable IP subnet design will allow you to respond more quickly to incidents. For example, in large company with a private IP space, private subnets 10.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/12 are often used, according to Request for Comments (RFC) 1918. It is convenient to allocate a second octet to regional offices: for example, 10 for New York, 15 for Chicago and 20 for Seattle. If you receive a notification from a computer with the address 10.15.97.12, it is clear that it is located in the Chicago office, and you can immediately contact the administrator of that office.

Let's take it a step further by allocating a third octet for intra-office subnets, such as the perimeter subnet, server subnet, and user subnet. For example, if you identify workstation numbers 96 through 111 on a user's subnet, it will be obvious that the address 10.15.97.12 belongs to a computer on the user's subnet in the Chicago office.

Renumbering an office IP space is not always possible, but when choosing an architecture for a new office or changing IP network addresses, it is useful to implement standards that will speed up the response to dangerous events.

These examples reflect another security principle: place computers with different levels risk to different subnets. Example: place user workstations and servers on different subnets. Even in a flat network consisting of a single subnet, you can assign servers to one IP range and workstations to another to get a general idea of the location of a computer based on its IP address. For example, in the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet you can assign numbers 0-10 in the third octet network equipment, 11-100 servers and 101-200 user workstations.

Friendly names

A computer and user naming convention that makes it easier to find computers by name alone can dramatically reduce response time to events. If there are many offices in the organization, the most effective method- match the location of the office in which the computer is located with the name of the main user of this computer. For example, my username is "jeff" and I work in an office in Seattle, so my computer name is "sea-jeff". IT technicians throughout the organization don't need to know me by name, but if they receive an alert pointing to my computer, they can immediately contact local IT professionals in Seattle or contact me directly by looking up my username in Active Directory(AD).

An additional benefit of this naming standard is the ability to easily sort reports into alphabetical order by computer name or group them by office. Unfortunately, many systems still have NetBIOS's 15-character limit on computer names, and you have to get creative with shortening names.

Assigning names

Following the IP subnetting standard and computer naming convention helps quickly locate the location of a suspicious computer; however, not every organization can implement the new agreements. Fortunately, you can get the names of suspicious computers using two tools found on every Windows computer: ping and nbtstat. The problem is that these tools don't always provide exact information. The key to success is to use them together.

The ping command sends a packet to the computer and records a successful response. It also has an option to request name translation. Team

converts IP address from using DNS. Ping uses the DNS configuration of the client computer on which the command is running and has no direct knowledge of the target computer. Therefore, if the client running ping command, contains a hosts file with errors or is corrupted DNS cache, or if the DNS server the client is contacting is out of date, ping will return wrong name. For example, some RAS servers assign IP addresses to clients from their own pools and do not update the DNS server when IP addresses change. This is not easy when one client connects to RAS, registers its name in DNS and disconnects, then a second client connects and gets the same IP address as the disconnected client. If the second computer does not register its name in DNS, then ping resolves the IP address to the name of the first computer, not the second computer.

Screen 1 shows how incorrect DNS record may confuse ping and cause the program to return the wrong name. Ping reports that the computer named badhost has the address 192.168.0.6, when in fact the name of the computer with this address is midway. How did you find out? Using the second tool, nbtstat.

You can find out the NetBIOS name of the target computer using the command

Nbtstat - tool command line, which displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections using NetBIOS over the TCP/IP protocol. The -A option allows you to get the name table of the target computer if its IP address is known. Unlike ping, nbtstat queries the target computer directly and only works if the target computer is turned on and responding to NetBIOS requests. Successful use of nbtstat also requires that the target computer supports NetBIOS.

In a network consisting primarily of Windows computers, in which NetBIOS is active by default, nbtstat will very quickly return the name of any computer. If your system's firewall blocks NetBIOS traffic, you must create a rule to allow NetBIOS traffic from the name lookup client. Most likely, this computer will be the administrator's system.

Uniting teams

A joint using ping and nbtstat allows you to find out the IP address associated with a computer name. By combining these tools with naming conventions and subnetting standards, network vulnerabilities can be quickly identified and pinpointed.

Jeff Felling ([email protected]) - Windows editor IT Pro and Vice President of information security And technical support aQuantive company. Author of the book IT Administrator's Top 10 Introductory Scripts for Windows(Published by Charles River Media).

Isn't it a familiar situation: between two meetings or in the process of solving current problems, the firewall receives a notification that an uncontrolled flow of packets is coming from a computer with the IP address 10.15.97.12 to the NetBIOS ports of hundreds of other computers. Perhaps the computer is infected with a worm, and you need to ask the computer owner to immediately disconnect it from the network. At first glance, this can be done quickly, but when minutes count, even simple actions are difficult to complete without errors. Let's look at how naming conventions and IP standards can help you quickly identify a system, and then compare the methods for converting IP addresses into names of two well-known Windows tools.

Studying subnets

When considering networks, it is useful to follow the engineers in thinking about octets. As an enterprise grows, one flat subnet is replaced by several subnets representing security zones or offices. A structured and predictable IP subnet design will allow you to respond more quickly to incidents. For example, a large company with a private IP space often uses private subnets 10.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/12, according to Request for Comments (RFC) 1918. It is convenient to allocate a second octet to regional offices: for example, 10 for New York, 15 for Chicago and 20 for Seattle. If you receive a notification from a computer with the address 10.15.97.12, it is clear that it is located in the Chicago office, and you can immediately contact the administrator of that office.

These examples reflect another security principle: placing computers with different levels of risk on different subnets. Example: place user workstations and servers on different subnets. Even in a flat network consisting of a single subnet, you can assign servers to one IP range and workstations to another to get a general idea of the location of a computer based on its IP address. For example, in the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet, you can assign numbers 0-10 in the third octet to network equipment, 11-100 servers, and 101-200 user workstations.

Friendly names

A computer and user naming convention that makes it easier to find computers by name alone can dramatically reduce response time to events. If there are many offices in an organization, the most effective way is to match the location of the office where the computer is located with the name of the primary user of that computer. For example, my username is "jeff" and I work in an office in Seattle, so my computer name is "sea-jeff". IT technicians throughout the organization don't need to know me by name, but when they receive an alert pointing to my computer, they can immediately contact local IT in Seattle or contact me directly by looking up my username in Active Directory (AD).

An additional benefit of this naming standard is the ability to easily sort reports alphabetically by computer name or group them by office. Unfortunately, many systems still have NetBIOS's 15-character limit on computer names, and you have to get creative with shortening names.

Assigning names

Following the IP subnetting standard and computer naming convention helps quickly locate the location of a suspicious computer; however, not every organization can implement the new agreements. Fortunately, you can get the names of suspicious computers using two tools found on every Windows computer: ping and nbtstat. The problem is that these tools don't always provide accurate information. The key to success is to use them together.

The ping command sends a packet to the computer and records a successful response. It also has an option to request name translation. Team

resolves IP address using DNS. Ping uses the DNS configuration of the client computer on which the command is running and has no direct knowledge of the target computer. Therefore, if the client running ping has an invalid hosts file or a corrupted DNS cache, or if the DNS server the client is contacting is out of date, ping will return the wrong name. For example, some RAS servers assign IP addresses to clients from their own pools and do not update the DNS server when IP addresses change. This is not easy when one client connects to RAS, registers its name in DNS and disconnects, then a second client connects and gets the same IP address as the disconnected client. If the second computer does not register its name in DNS, then ping resolves the IP address to the name of the first computer, not the second computer.

Screen 1 shows how a bad DNS entry can confuse ping and cause the program to return the wrong name. Ping reports that the computer named badhost has the address 192.168.0.6, when in fact the name of the computer with this address is midway. How did you find out? Using the second tool, nbtstat.

You can find out the NetBIOS name of the target computer using the command

Nbtstat is a command line tool that displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections using NetBIOS over the TCP/IP protocol. The -A option allows you to get the target computer's name table if its IP address is known. Unlike ping, nbtstat queries the target computer directly and only works if the target computer is turned on and responding to NetBIOS requests. Successful use of nbtstat also requires that the target computer supports NetBIOS.

On a network consisting primarily of Windows computers where NetBIOS is active by default, nbtstat will very quickly return the name of any computer. If your system's firewall blocks NetBIOS traffic, you must create a rule to allow NetBIOS traffic from the name lookup client. Most likely, this computer will be the administrator's system.

Uniting teams

Using ping and nbtstat together allows you to find out the IP address associated with a computer name. By combining these tools with naming conventions and subnetting standards, network vulnerabilities can be quickly identified and pinpointed.

Jeff Felling ([email protected]) is a Windows IT Pro editor and vice president of information security and engineering at aQuantive. Author of the book IT Administrator's Top 10 Introductory Scripts for Windows (Charles River Media).

A computer name is a set of characters that is used to identify a computer on a local network. The computer name is initially set during the operating system installation process. But many users simply skip this installation step. As a result, an automatically generated character set is used as the computer name. Naturally, this complicates working on a local network and in such cases it is necessary to change the computer name. In this article we will talk about how to change the computer name in Windows 7 or.

Changing the computer name is quite simple; all you need to do is access the system settings. To begin, click on the “System and Security” link, and then on the “System” link.

After this, the “View basic information about your computer” window will open in front of you.

Here on the “Computer name” tab you need to click on the “Change” button. After which you should see a window called “Change computer name or domain name”.

In this horse you can change the computer name. To do this, enter a new name in the “Computer name” field and close the window by clicking on the “OK” button.

It should be noted that it is recommended to use only the English alphabet (A-Z), numbers (0-9) and the hyphen (-) as the computer name. However, the computer name cannot contain only numbers or include a space. In addition to Space, it is prohibited to use the following characters:< > ; : » * + = \ | ? ,

All changes have been made. In order for the computer to use the new name, you must restart. After closing the System Properties window, a window will open asking you to reboot. You can agree by clicking on the “Restart now” button or refuse and restart your computer at any time convenient for you.