Editing Computer Name In Registry

[hlewton]

Long story short, I had a new computer built from an image of a Windows 10 computer. In a round about way it got to me with Windows 11 installed, as I requested. The problem is my Brother printers still all recognize their drivers as being under the name of the computer I made the image from. All the Brother printers were removed, new driver files were downloaded, and installed. Still the Brother printers see the computer under the name of the "cloned" computer.

When I check the computer using "About PC" it shows the computer being the new name I asked for but Brother printers do not see it that way. I did a search of the Registry and it showed the computer name to be the Old Name of the cloned computer. I am wondering if it would do any good to edit the old name to the new name everywhere I find the old name, especially in reference to the Brother Printers? I don't see a way to find and replace, so I assume if I do this it will be a tedious task but worth it if it works.

Thoughts please.

Thanks

[HansV]

You can try that, but be very careful not to make mistakes!

[hlewton]

You can try that, but be very careful not to make mistakes!

Thanks. I just changed every instance of the Computer Name and PCNAME I found plus everywhere it had that name in conjunction with a Brother Printer. Right now it seems to be working well. I rebooted it to make sure it still worked and so far, it does.

There are still a lot of other Registry instances that have the old computer's name in them. Are there any type in particular I should avoid Modifying that you can think of?

The bad thing about all this is I had it built that way to try to preserve the life of a program I bought that can no longer be registered on line because the company went out of business. That did not work but most all other programs did still work except 1, but I could activate it with no problem.

[HansV]

I'd only replace more instances of the old name if you run into problems - that might also provide a clue which registry entries should be changed.

[hlewton]

I'd only replace more instances of the old name if you run into problems - that might also provide a clue which registry entries should be changed.

Thanks. I was thinking along the same lines. It was just astounding how many instances of that computer name I found. It may be a common thing for the Registry to have all those entries, I just never knew it. I did see see a couple entries I know I can delete later that were associated with printers, not Brother printers, that I no longer have.