Changing the computer name: Windows Vista feature or bug?
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I was at a client’s site today and had to change the computer name on a Vista PC to clear up a conflict. I found what is either a “feature” of Vista or a bona fide bug in the OS. When I tried to change the computer name from “Xyz” to “XYZ,” the OK button was greyed out. In fact, no three-letter name would work. I either had to go with more or fewer letters to get the OK button to activate. I changed the name to “Xy” and rebooted. I was then able to change the name to “XYZ.”
I haven’t found anything to indicate that this is a Vista feature, so for now I’m going to assume it’s a bug. This, and the fact that the client’s remote backup program doesn’t support Vista (so I can’t restore his data directly to the new machine) made for one of those “interesting” days.
If anyone has any insight on this issue, feel free to comment!
Cheers!
The Geek
Have a computer problem? A question about your latest gadget? Click here to Ask the Geek! Kenny “The Geek” Harthun has been playing with geeky stuff since 1965. He’s a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer with Connective Computing, Inc. providing network, desktop, data recovery and info security support services to a wide range of clients.
6 Comments
Golgo 13
April 24th, 2007
at 5:00am
From your example, it appears that rather than try to change the computer name, your were just changing it to CAPS (Xyz to XYZ, which is the same as trying to change it from Computer1 to COMPUTER1). This won’t work and has never worked as far as I’m aware. NT passwaords are case sensitive but computer names are not, so from Vistas point of view, you hadn’t changed the computer name at all, hence the greyed out OK button.
Brian
April 24th, 2007
at 6:07am
Hm.. that’s a good one. Didn’t replicate on my Vista Home Prem install, Dell 8600 laptop. I could change the computer name to any 3-letter combination, no problems.
Is the system perhaps a Vista Business or Ultimate networked into a domain? Perhaps there are computer naming restrictions that can be set by policy direction of network admins?
Tip: Just discovered this the other day.. Press WINKEY + PAUSE|BREAK keys to get the System properties dialog in XP or Vista. In Vista, the System Properties dialog is where the Computer Name is displayed, and changed.
Doug Griffin
April 24th, 2007
at 8:34am
You didn’t change the name, therefore the button remained grayed.
xyz to XYZ is a change in case, not name. The same thing happens in Windows XP
Brian
April 24th, 2007
at 12:05pm
Well changing “xyz” to “XYZ” won’t let you hit ok because there is no difference.
If trying to change “xyz” to “abc” still doesn’t allow you to change, then there is a bug.
To get around this just for cosmetic purposes, you can change “xyz” to “TEMP” hit ok, deny the restart, and just go back in and change it to “XYZ” THEN restart. The change will be visible locally, but won’t go into effect on the network until a reboot.
Julia
June 10th, 2007
at 4:34pm
When I get e-mail that has pictures or video I get Unicode UTF-8. I can not opened them up. Why?
gnomewriter
June 13th, 2007
at 8:21am
Julia - You’ll have to be more specific. There could be many reasons for such behavior. UTF-8 is simply a way of encoding text. Please send me the exact error message you are getting and what email client you are running. The Geek