I borrowed a VHD recently with Windows 2003 SP 2 installed. Since I had to rename the name of the machine before I make a networked farm, I thought of writing this post to show how you can take care of renaming of an IIS Server. Yeah, looks and sounds simple but I have a few tips up my sleeve so you may prefer to read on.

To rename a machine is not difficult. Right Click on My Computer –> Properties –> Computer Name –> Change and give a name. Yes, that simple. It will ask for a reboot, do it… and you are done.

Now, let’s say you see a screen like this after you rebooted this and don’t like the IUSR_OldName and IWAM_OLDName… If you delete these accounts or rename it, you will find that as soon as you restart your IIS Admin service, they will be back. Besides, you will not be able to browse the sites that are accessible for Anonymous Users. Before you delete both the IUSR_OLDName and IWAM_OLDName accounts, ensure that your pages are coming up fine with the existing account name.

This is the error that you will get for sites with Anonymous Access…

Don’t worry, this is by design. So how do you take care of this? Before you proceed, take a backup of IIS Metabase.

Right click on your Machine Name in IIS Manager and select properties (see snapshot)–> Enable Direct Metabase Edit and click Ok.

 

   Open C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\Metabase.xml in Notepad
   Search for AnonymousUserName and change the value to IUSR_DC (or any name you like) for all instances
   Search for WAMUserName and change the value to IWAM_DC (or any name you like) for all instances
   Save Metabase.xml
   Start –> Run –> Services.msc –> Right click on IIS Admin Service and choose to restart.
   You will find two new accounts with name IUSR_DC and IWAM_DC created for you.

 

   Browse the site and ensure it works. In case you still have difficulties read this and synchronize your password.

I hope this helps.

Rahul

Quote of the day:
Doing nothing is very hard to do ... you never know when you're finished. - Leslie Nielsen