workgroup and pc name

edijs

edijs

Programmer
Hello, everybody!

I had this pc (windows) which needed its name and workgroup changed. So I thought - go into system properties and simply change the names of the pc and workgroup and restart the pc. done!

but one guy told me that the changing of workgroups and names of pcs renders your current profile useless (since i'm changing the name of the pc and the workgroup) and you need to create a new one.

I mean I know these name changing things are a issue in domains, but workgroups?

thanks
 
edijs said:
but one guy told me that the changing of workgroups and names of pcs renders your current profile useless
Click to expand...
That is not true. Changing the computer name or workgroup has no effect on the user profile local or in a direct network connection. But the user name is built up on this way: //computer name/useraccount. So if a computer is been set to connect to a specific user account on another pc (where you want to change the name), it then needs to be reconfigured to use the new computer name. (but that is not very common to be used)
 
so, only if one computers user is saved on another computer, then I have to worry; otherwise - if all user profiles of one computer are stored only on that computer, it doesn't matter.

I don't know where he got that information from, but maybe I just misunderstood him.

thanks!
 
Yes that's true. Lets say the computer name of one pc is WindozePC. Another computer has the user Jim, and it is stored on the other computer, it connects to the userprofile as \\WindozePC\Jim. If you would change the computername to IWantLinux, then the other computer can't access it with \\WindozePC\Jim because that name isn't valid anymore. Also, you might need to change (or re-share) any network printers and network drives, as they are shared on the same way (\\computername).

And about workgroups, multiple computers in one workgroup can't all be logged on with the same user name. So every computer needs a unique user name.
 
so, like if i have a workgroup consisting of 3 PCs then I can't have them all be used by a user "PCuser"? I didn't know that. Those profiles are stored on their respective machines and there's no domain where they could collide. What are possible consequences (somme apps not working, people are unable to logon ...)?
 
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