Changing Your Computer's Name

When Windows Vista was installed on your computer, the person doing the installation provided a name by which the computer is identified. If you installed Windows Vista yourself, you might have chosen a name that was meaningful or helpful to you, such as TabletPC or Accounting1. If you purchased the computer with Windows Vista already installed, the name might be only a series of numbers and characters. If you have administrator permissions, you can change the computer name.

To view the computer name:

On the Start menu, click Computer.
The Computer folder name appears in the Address bar, and the name assigned to your computer appears in the Details pane at the bottom of the window.

To change the computer name:

1.	On the Start menu, right-click Computer, and then click Properties. The System window opens.
2.	Under Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings, click Change settings. In the User Account Control dialog box, if you're logged on as an administrator, click Continue. Otherwise, enter an administrator password, and then click OK.
3.	On the Computer Name tab of the System Properties dialog box, click Change.
4.	In the Computer Name/Domain Changes dialog box, replace the existing computer name with the name you want, and then click OK.
5.	Click OK to acknowledge that the name change won't take effect until you restart your computer, and then close the System Properties dialog box.
6.	In the Microsoft Windows message box, click Restart Now, or if it isn't convenient to restart your computer at this time, click Restart Later.

Changing the Name of the Computer Folder

By default, the link to your Computer folder is called Computer. If you want, you can change this name to match your computer name (or any other name, but that might be confusing). To change the link name:

1.
On the Start menu, right-click Computer, and then click Rename.

2.
With Computer selected for editing, type the name you want to appear, and then press .

The link name can't contain a slash (/ or \), colon (:), asterisk (*), question mark (?), double quotation mark ("), less than sign (<), greater than sign (>), or pipe (|). Some symbols, such as an exclamation point (!), at symbol (@), pound sign (#), dollar sign ($), percent symbol (%), caret (^), ampersand (&), and underscore (_) are valid, as are uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, commas, periods, and parentheses. Windows displays up to two lines of characters (if separated by a space) on the Start menu.