I apologize -- I have written this down twice already, and somehow you aren't able to understand it.... I will see if a third time does the trick, but this is as far as I go on this question....
During the Windows installation process, you are FORCED to provide a machine name, although with some installations it offers a suggestion that uses the personal name you provided earlier in the installation process with some random characters after it. (like dan-we419s0a). You CANNOT leave this blank. Later in the installation process, the system must reboot -- if for no other reason than to install the system name... WHICH IS ALSO YOUR NETBIOS NAME.
SYSTEM NAME <=--=> NetBIOS NAME : THEY ARE THE SAME THING!
- Any "local" administrator (member of the machine's Administrators group -- and in a Domain environment, that also includes the Domain Admins group) can CHANGE the NetBIOS name by simply changing the machine name and rebooting.
THERE IS NO (repeat: NO) WAY to change the NetBIOS name of a Windows system without changing the system name and rebooting.
If your hardware is connected to a network (that is, if the network driver was pre-loaded and you are connected already), the system will give you an ERROR if there is another system on the network with the same name. If you boot a windows system onto a network and it detects another system with the same name, BOTH are supposed to warn you that another system with the same name is on the LAN, and the "new" one is supposed to DISCONNECT from the NetBIOS (workgroup) network. (The error message usually doesn't tell you how to fix it -- change the name of your computer & reboot!)
If, when you type "net config workstation" it shows you your DNS name, it is only BY ACCIDENT that your NetBIOS name and DNS name are the same. DNS and NetBIOS have NO RELATION to each other. Changing one does NOT affect the other. They can be the same, they can be different -- both are legal and fine in many circumstances.
BTW: In the output of the "net config workstation", MOST of the references to "DOMAIN" are actually references to "WORKGROUP" (or PDC/BDC Domain or AD domain) -- NOT a DNS domain.
Just as it is legal (possibly desirable) to have your NetBIOS name match your DNS name, it is often the case that your NetBIOS Domain (Workgroup, PDC/BDC, or AD) will match your DNS name. That is another topic, but IMHO it is "bad form" to make them exact. Personally, I make my AD domain "mycompany" and my local DNS domain "mycompany.local" just so I know the difference.
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So, now you know how to find your own NetBIOS name -- so maybe you want to find out your DNS name?
Well, that can be MUCH harder -- because DNS names are controlled by the DNS server, which you may or may not have access to. One thing you CAN do however is find out if there is a REVERSE DNS record for your IP address, and this SHOULD (if DNS was configured completely & properly) give you at least one DNS name by which you can be called. (You see, DNS can give your computer MANY names -- NetBIOS is a one-to-one relationship in that you can have only one NetBIOS name).
To see if you have a REVERSE DNS entry for your system, do the following:
1) Get your IP Address:
ipconfig
NOTE: It SHOULD be a 192.168, 172.16-31, or 10. address -- anything else is potentially an Internet Address, except 169.254 addresses, which are "DHCP failure" addresses.
2) Query for your reverse DNS entry (I will assume your IP address ia 192.168.0.100):
nslookup 192.168.0.100
NOTE: If you get an error message it just means your DNS server isn't maintaining the reverse mappings. Not optimal or complete, but still usable. Unfortunately, it DOES mean that you'll have no definitive way of seeing what your DNS name(s) might be on your DNS domain
I hope this answers your questions...
Dan
IT4SOHO
