How to remove alternative NetBIOS name
We renamed a Windows 2008 R2 x64 server.
We renamed it by running
netdom computername oldname /add:newname
netdom computername oldname /makeprimary:newname
netdom computername newname /remove:oldname
REF: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc835082.aspx
This was done in a staged manor over a couple of days with reboot's and other configuration changes to keep services up as much as possible while changing the server's name. From the point of view of active directory everything worked. The object in users and computers has changed name, their is no reference to oldname in the AD Database (I spent hours searching in ADSIEdit) and the DNS records are correct. We have even checked the system name table with
C:\Windows\system32>netdom computername newname /enumerate:ALLNAMES
All of the names for the computer are:
newname.ourdomain.local
The command completed successfully.
and this shows the single new name :)
However..... The server still responds over netbios to the oldname and the newname. We tracked this back by doing a network capture and proving that it was responding to the old name. After that we ran
C:\Windows\system32>nbtstat.exe -n
OURDOMAIN:
Node IpAddress: [10.x.y.z] Scope Id: []
NetBIOS Local Name Table
Name Type Status
---------------------------------------------
NEWNAME <00> UNIQUE Registered
OURDOMAIN <00> GROUP Registered
NEWNAME <20> UNIQUE Registered
OLDNAME <20> UNIQUE Registered
outputs modified for obvious reasons.
We have looked in the registry and neither of the following keys contain the oldname
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanServer\Parameters\OptionalNames
or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName\ComputerName
EDIT: In response to a great idea from @Rex
setspn -L newname
Registered ServicePrincipalNames for CN=NEWNAME,OU=Servers,OU=Site1,DC=ourdomain,DC=local:
SMTPSVC/NEWNAME
SMTPSVC/newname.ourdomain.local
TERMSRV/NEWNAME
TERMSRV/newname.ourdomain.local
WSMAN/NEWNAME
WSMAN/newname.ourdomain.local
RestrictedKrbHost/NEWNAME
HOST/NEWNAME
RestrictedKrbHost/newname.ourdomain.local
HOST/newname.ourdomain.local
This is puzzling. Does anyone know how to remove OLDNAME from the systems netbios identity? Or even any way to progress our diagnosis?
I'll throw this in an answer just in case it slipped under the radar as a comment. Apologies ahead of time if you saw it already and it doesn't apply to your situation...
Can you double-check HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanServer\Parameters\OptionalNames
? I just followed your steps and found OLDNAME
was still present in the output of nbtstat. I searched the registry for instances of OLDNAME
and found three. I then renamed each to different unique values, rebooted, and ran nbtstat
again. The value in OptionalNames
is now in the output of nbtstat
along with NEWNAME
. I was even able to add a tertiary name to the output of nbtstat
by adding another value to OptionalNames
(it's a REG_MULTI_SZ).