> Michael
> 
> have you tried doing a directed recovery of the new  servers file from 
the 
> server to all the clients (before renaming the server) ? ... I don't see 
why 
> that shouldn't work. The nsr.dir directives on the clients would be a 
problem 
> for the recoveries. They apply to backups only (or do they?).
> 
> I haven't tried it myself yet. I'm back from work and the idea just came 
up. 

I have not tried this to all clients, no. But I have done backups, and 
directed recovers, since adding the new name of the server to the servers 
file, and re-starting the service on the testing clients. And it all 
worked as expected.

NW doesn't seem to care that there is no server with the new name existing 
yet. It does care when you install a new client; I couldn't add the new 
name to a new client, it told me the new server name didn't exist (which 
is correct). So I just added the current name, and then after the install 
was done, stopped the service; modified the servers file; restarted the 
service, and went about my business. :-)