How to: Change computername in Windows Explorer on Windows Server 2012 R2

When you’re are using a lot of virtual machines or environments, it’s somethimes realy usefull to see in what environment or on what server you’re logged in. If created a really nice solution for my servers, basically Remote Desktop Services in different environments, that does exact my I need! I’ve changed the displayname in Windows Explorer to the value “user on server”, for example: “mark on prod-rds-01”.

You can set this new value with Group Policy Preferences or some other scripting.

1.) Create a new GPO in the Group Policy Management Console
2.) Navigate to “User Configuration / Preferences / Windows Settings / Registry
3.) Create a new registry item and browse to the following registry key:
HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/CLSID/{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
4.) Change the default REG_SZ value to “%username% on %computername%”
5.) Login to the specific server where you targeted the GPO and open Windows Explorer
6.) The name of your computer has changed to “username on computername”

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