By Philip Churchill on August 01st, 2007
Can I Change the Name of my Server from "SERVER"?
You may change your Windows Home Server network name after setup completes. Log into the Administrator desktop via a Remote Desktop session. Click Start, right click My Computer and click Properties. On the Computer Name tab you can change the machine name by clicking the Change button.
If you change your server’s name after installing the Home Server Connector on your home computers you will have to re-connect them to the server by either re-installing the Home Server Connector software or by running discovery.exe from the %PROGRAMFILES%\Windows Home Server directory on your home computers.
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Hi Philip, won’t this change cause a problem with the SSL certificate that is generated during setup? The certificate has the NetBIOS name of the server as its “issued to” name. If we rename the server then this’ll be a mismatch and we’ll be back in the “there is a problem with the certificate” error on connecting to the remote access website. Or am I missing something?
All it takes is recreation of a new self-signed cert plus installing it in the website and we should be OK to go.
Of course, if you’ve already installed the connector software on a client you’ll also have to fix the trusted root cert issue with the new cert as well as correcting the name used in the connector software.
So all in all, not as simple as it first appears – unless you know different (and I’m hoping that you do)
Hi mccrispy,
Sorry for the delay as I have been away. As far as I am aware once you change the “SERVER” name all you have to do is re-install the connector software on each client PC. This should then “pick-up” the new name automatically. This new name will then be auto placed into the certificate thus avoiding the “there is a problem with the certificate” error message.
I renamed my server, then attempted to re-install the connector on each of the clients. This failed on the “configuring computer backup” stage on each PC. After much playing around, I found the cause to be that the connector software on the server was out of sync with the software I was attempting to install on the clients (i.e. the ones with my SQUASH installation CD).
To fix the problem I needed to browse to \\server\software (using Administrator and password), copy the “Home Server Connector Software” directory locally and run Setup.exe. No more problems configuring backups.
Hope this helps anyone that has similar problems.
Who do I need to contact at Microsoft to request to release my previous FQDN name registered? This was obtained when I installed an EVAL version of WHS. What is best process to achieve this!
Thanks,
Mohamed