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Creating Computer Accounts

As with user accounts, each computer connecting to your Active Directory domain requires a computer account within the domain. This can be added by an administrator from the workstation or can be created directly in Active Directory.

We recommend you develop a naming standard for the computers in your environment. If you are a small company, this could be as simple as computer001, computer002. You could differentiate between desktops and laptops if desired. We like a more descriptive name allowing you to identify the division or department a computer is in and whether the machine is a laptop or desktop. An example computer name could be org-mktws041 or org-hrlt008. Each of these naming structures names your organization and the department the user is in (Marketing and HR respectively). In addition, it differentiates between desktops (ws) and laptops (lt). The three digit number is just the next number in a sequence.

We do recommend keeping the computer name to 14 characters or less. Pre-Windows 2000 clients cannot have computer names exceeding 14 characters, so it makes sense to stay within this limit.

Creating a computer account is similar to creating a user account:

1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers.
2. Right-click on Computers, choose New, and click on Computer.
3. Type in the desired computer name. Keep in mind the Computer name (pre-Windows 2000) field is limited to 15 characters. Click Next >.
4. Choose whether the machine is a managed computer. If you don't know, leave it unselected. Click Next>.
5. Click Finish.

 Watch this short animated clip to see how easy it is to create a new computer account.