Setting the Administrator Password

The Winlogon and security subsystem in Core is the same as in a standard installation of Windows Server 2008, so to change the password of the logged-on account, just press Ctrl+Alt+Delete as you would normally do. Select the Change a Password link from the menu, and the normal change password dialog displays.

Passwords can also be changed via the net user command as on any other Windows installation by passing the username and the new password or passing the wildcard (*) character to be prompted for the new password. To change a domain account password, add the /domain switch.

Setting the Server Name

In the first screen, you viewed the server name using the hostname command. However, to change the server name, use the netdom command with the renamecomputer switch. To avoid having to type in the long default computer name, use the %computername% environment variable and then pass the new server name with the /NewName switch:

C:\Windows\System32>netdom renamecomputer %computername% /New
Name:savtstcore01
This operation will rename the computer WIN-DJM3YTGC5KZ
to savtstcore01.

Certain services, such as the Certificate Authority, rely on a
fixed machine name. If any services of this type are running on
WIN-DJM3YTGC5KZ, then a computer name change would have an adverse impact.

Do you want to proceed (Y or N)?
y
The computer needs to be restarted in order to complete the operation.

The command completed successfully.

This change does not take immediate effect; a reboot is required by selecting the Restart option from the Ctrl+Alt+Del screen shutdown options or by using the shutdown /r /t 0 command. When the reboot is complete, the server has taken the new name, which you can verify by rerunning the hostname command.