Computer Accounts

[James Payne]

General policy question here.

How is this best approached. A computer is a member of a domain and is
scheduled to be replaced. The new computer will be named as the old
computer (think end user workstation). Should you delete the active
directory computer account and then join the new computer to the domain? Or
should you power down the old machine and join the new computer to the
domain using the computer account already there?

 

[Mike Shepperd]

You need to remove the old computer account from AD and you may also need to
delete any old DNS entries for that machine (less important for a
workstation than a server). If you just tried to substitute the new machine
for the old one, it might appear to work but you would end up seeing various
failures down the road.