Mulitiple names on a single PC?

8 Sep 2006 4:09 PM

Noozer

I have a couple PC's which have shared folders on them. I'm taking one out
of commision and was wondering if it would be possible to add it's name to
another PC, so I don't need the change the mapped drives.

ie:

PC1 is named "archive" and has a shared folder named "keep"
PC2 is named "internet" and has shared folders named, "published" and
"downloads"
PC3 is named "media" and has shared folders named "music" and "video"
PC4 is named "backup" and has a shared folder named "documents"

I have DNS pointing to each machine (ie keep.mydomain.com = 10.0.11.16,
published.mydomain.com = 10.0.11.17, downloads.mydomain.com = 10.0.11.18,
music.mydomain.com = 10.0.11.19, etc.)

On my PC, R: is mapped to //archive/keep, P: is mapped to
//internet/published, L: is mapped to //internet/downloads, M: is mapped to
//media/music and V: is mapped to //media/video, X: is mapped to
//backup/documents and O: is mapped to //backup/documents/steve. Other PC's
are mapped similarly.

I'm taking PC2 offline, so I'm moving the shared folders to PC3. I'm hoping
to avoid having to change the mapping on all my computers. I'm really hoping
that I can find a way to map to the shared folders in such a way that I
simply need to change DNS to point to a new PC when I move shared folders to
another computer.

9 Sep 2006 12:40 AM

AJR

Don't think so!

"Noozer" <dont.spam@me.here> wrote in message

news:HAgMg.532605$IK3.267226@pd7tw1no...
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>I have a couple PC's which have shared folders on them. I'm taking one out
>of commision and was wondering if it would be possible to add it's name to
>another PC, so I don't need the change the mapped drives.
>
> ie:
>
> PC1 is named "archive" and has a shared folder named "keep"
> PC2 is named "internet" and has shared folders named, "published" and
> "downloads"
> PC3 is named "media" and has shared folders named "music" and "video"
> PC4 is named "backup" and has a shared folder named "documents"
>
> I have DNS pointing to each machine (ie keep.mydomain.com = 10.0.11.16,
> published.mydomain.com = 10.0.11.17, downloads.mydomain.com = 10.0.11.18,
> music.mydomain.com = 10.0.11.19, etc.)
>
> On my PC, R: is mapped to //archive/keep, P: is mapped to
> //internet/published, L: is mapped to //internet/downloads, M: is mapped
> to //media/music and V: is mapped to //media/video, X: is mapped to
> //backup/documents and O: is mapped to //backup/documents/steve. Other
> PC's are mapped similarly.
>
> I'm taking PC2 offline, so I'm moving the shared folders to PC3. I'm
> hoping to avoid having to change the mapping on all my computers. I'm
> really hoping that I can find a way to map to the shared folders in such a
> way that I simply need to change DNS to point to a new PC when I move
> shared folders to another computer.
>

9 Sep 2006 10:51 AM

Ian

If you put the machine name into the LMHOSTS file of the clients it should
have this effect.

10.20.30.40 thismachine #PRE

lmhosts is in \windows\system32\drivers\etc, and it must have NO extension.

For this to work there must be no computer 'visible' with that real name,
and you might need to isssue an NBTSTAT-R command if the client doggedly
insists on looking for the old computer.

Having said that, it's a poor arrangement in terms of the need to change
settings on every computer to make a single update. A better arrangement is
to map drives with a logon-script or policy. That way, one central change
works for all clients. (and this is a very good argument for using
driveletters instead of UNC shares -if a computer with a directly-mapped UNC
share disappears then every client to that share needs its settings
individually changed. )