Admit it. When you first set up your HP MediaSmart Server, you flew through the intial setup wizard hitting next at lighting speed. During that set up, you may (briefly) recall that during the installation process you are asked to provide a name for your Server, and if you were quick with the next button or not paying much attention you may now be stuck with the default server name. Or, what may have seemed like a good name at the time turned out to be something you're not happy with now.

If you're in either of those camps, no doubt you've searched every inch of the home server console for the option to change it... only to come up empty handed. Fortunately, not all hope is lost. Take a sigh of relief; there is a way to change this name later.

As you may know or have heard others talk about, Windows Home Server OS is, at its core anyway, the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Like any other version of Windows, there is a way to change the computer name. You just need to know where to look. Follow me as we go step-by-step through this process.

The first step is to log into the Windows Home Server OS via Remote Desktop (RDP).  In order to use remote desktop, your computer OS must be able initiate Remote Desktop connections. You do this by opening the Remote Desktop Connection and then entering either the name of the Server or the IP address of the Server into the RDP dialog box.  You can typically find the Remote Desktop in the Accessories section of the Start menu of your Client PC. See the image below:

When you're asked for credentials, the username is "Administrator" and the password is whatever you set as your main MediaSmart Server password. As a little sidenote, HP Support does not support Remote Desktop’ing into the Server, and caution should be exercised since you can really mess things up if you don’t know what you're doing.

Once you have established a remote connection into the Server, click Start, then right click on My Computer (on the top right column), then click on Properties. You'll be presented the System Properties window:

Click on the Computer Name tab, then click on Change.  When the Computer Name Changes dialog box opens, you can change the name in the space below Computer Name.  See the image below:

When you've updated your server's name click OK to close the Computer Name Changes dialog box, then click OK to close System Properties box. You can then close the Remote Desktop session by clicking the x on the yellow bar at the top of the screen.

For prosperity, give your MSS a quick reboot and all should be well. Enjoy your newly named HP MediaSmart Server.