Windows Explorer

03-09-2007, 10:24

Anybody know how to force Windows Explorer to show the actual DNS name / computer name instead of the computer description???

7@m3 G33k · 03-09-2007, 18:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by LSainsbury

Anybody know how to force Windows Explorer to show the actual DNS name / computer name instead of the computer description???

Do you mean the host PC (My Computer) or machines that you are connected to over a network?

03-09-2007, 20:01

When you browse the domain on a Windows Server 2003 server - it lists the servers PC's by their description....if there's nowt in the description it lists the server / PC by it's machine / DNS name...

I want to see all Servers / PC's by their machine / DNS name.

Got me now?

Cobbydaler · 03-09-2007, 21:28

Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP?

03-09-2007, 21:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobbydaler

Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP?

How would that help Cobby? It's not a case that I can't see them - I just want to view the names in another way. There's sod all in the view menu!

03-09-2007, 21:55

Don't know if this will work on 2003, but on XP, View/Details gives two columns, Name and Comments. On mine, the Name column gives the description, with the NetBios name in brackets. The Comments column gives the description. If only one column is shown, right click in the heading bar, and make sure both bolumns are ticke.

04-09-2007, 10:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnHorb

Don't know if this will work on 2003, but on XP, View/Details gives two columns, Name and Comments. On mine, the Name column gives the description, with the NetBios name in brackets. The Comments column gives the description. If only one column is shown, right click in the heading bar, and make sure both columns are ticke.

Yeah - I think thats the default view setting - what I want to do is display like this:

server01 this is a fileserver

NOT:

this is a fileserver (server01)

Get my drift?

7@m3 G33k · 04-09-2007, 11:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by LSainsbury

Yeah - I think thats the default view setting - what I want to do is display like this:

server01 this is a fileserver

NOT:

this is a fileserver (server01)

Get my drift?

Would it be a very arduous task to remove the descriptions from all of the servers? I suppose you were trying to avoid that and if you don't have a useful naming convention for servers it might be a problem too...

(note to self: think before posting

)

Uncle Peter · 04-09-2007, 16:56

This is a particularly irritating feature of Windows Explorer in XP/2003 and unfortunately there is no workaround. The view attributes of the name column are hard-coded into the OS code

If you need a server list for documentation for example then Excel is your friend in this instance. Either that or you could use admodify to remove all of the computer descriptions but this is a rather heavy-handed approach and could be messy if you have a lot of machines in different OUs/containers.