The Lazy Admin

Configuring Additional NetBIOS Names Sponsor

Just about everyone knows that a Windows operating system may have only one computer name. While this is true, there is a way to add additional NetBIOS names to a Windows operating system, effectively giving the machine additional computer names or identities on the network. TLA reader Jason Boche has submitted this excellent how-to on this subject. Why would you want to do something like this? Possible reasons would be for server consolidation or the execution of a disaster recovery plan. It may be easy enough to migrate a back end application onto a different server for the purposes of consolidation, however, if one has hundreds or thousands of clients with hard coded references to the old location of the application, there would be a lot of leg work to do. Assigning an additional name to the server where the application was moved to provides a workaround which requires very little administrative effort. This same thought process could also be applied to a disaster recovery plan where one goes offsite and must consolidate many server services or applications down to just a few or one disaster recovery server at the hot site. In the following example, I m working with a server which has a computer name of VI3. The first thing we need to do is create a new REG_SZ string called OptionalNames under HKLM\System\CurrenControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters Set the value to your desired additional NetBIOS name.

Before this will work we need to create a REG_DWORD called DisableStrictNameChecking and set the value to 1. This should be added under HKLM\System\CurrenControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters

The DisableStrictNameChecking registry key disables a security feature that doesn t allow Windows to respond to a connection to the server via a name other than its original NetBIOS name (its given computer name). Finally you need to restart the Server service. With that complete run the following at a command prompt nbtstat -n You should see an output similar to the following with both NetBIOS names listed.

To further test if it is working, switch to another machine on the same network and try to access a share using both NetBIOS names. You should be able to access the computers share from both NetBIOS names.

This is one method for adding additional names to a machine from a network perspective. There are a few more methods that I m aware of which you may want to investigate for your own use. One being the installation of clustering and virtual name resources on the computer, the other being the use of multiple DNS ANAME records. Published Tuesday, July 18, 2006 6:19 AM by rodney.buike Filed under: Directory Services, Guest Authors

Comments
Henning said:
This didn't work on my Win2003 domain controller. I then found KB article Q281308, added an alias name in DNS and restarted. Then, I could ping the secondary name (DNS worked), but not open a network connection in order to use the shares. The secondary name is visible in windows explorer, but clicking on the computer name opens a windows asking for an authentication. No user/password combination known to me was accepted, neither the local account, nor the domain account. Too bad...