Change windows hostname from command line [closed]

Question

Is it possible to change the hostname in Windows 2003 from the command line with out-of-the-box tools?

Answer 1

The previously mentioned wmic command is the way to go, as it is installed by default in recent versions of Windows.

Here is my small improvement to generalize it, by retrieving the current name from the environment:

wmic computersystem where name="%COMPUTERNAME%" 
     call rename name="NEW-NAME"

NOTE: The command must be given in one line, but I've broken it into two to make scrolling unnecessary. As @rbeede mentions you'll have to reboot to complete the update.

Answer 2

I don't know of a command to do this, but you could do it in VBScript or something similar. Somthing like:

sNewName = "put new name here" 

Set oShell = CreateObject ("WSCript.shell" ) 

sCCS = "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\" 
sTcpipParamsRegPath = sCCS & "Services\Tcpip\Parameters\" 
sCompNameRegPath = sCCS & "Control\ComputerName\" 

With oShell 
.RegDelete sTcpipParamsRegPath & "Hostname" 
.RegDelete sTcpipParamsRegPath & "NV Hostname" 

.RegWrite sCompNameRegPath & "ComputerName\ComputerName", sNewName 
.RegWrite sCompNameRegPath & "ActiveComputerName\ComputerName", sNewName 
.RegWrite sTcpipParamsRegPath & "Hostname", sNewName 
.RegWrite sTcpipParamsRegPath & "NV Hostname", sNewName 
End With ' oShell 

MsgBox "Computer name changed, please reboot your computer" 

Original