Yes, a user with local admin privileges can change the machine's NetBIOS name. In practice, though, that's a PITA. If it's part of a domain, and it's not done by a domain admin there will be problems with the machine account on the domain controller. Even if it's just networked peer-to-peer you can potentially have problems like invalid security lists (who can access folder shares, printers etc.), loss of profile information if the old profile isn't migrated to a new name (with loss of e-mail, IE favourites and lots of other stuff that gets stored in a profile) etc.

Long story short, changing the machine name can cause a lot of problems so it's highly recommended to never do it. So, when you combine that with the requirement that each machine on a local network must have a unique NetBIOS name, it's a pretty good way to individually track machines.

BTW the unique requirement means that someone can't change a machine name from CANNING to WEIGHTING to try to get WEIGHTING's privileges, because the latter name is already being used on the network.

>Would it then be possible for an ordinary user to change the machine name & ulimately change the access of the machine?
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>I presume if the logged on use doesnt Administrator rights they cant change the computer name?
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>>>Someone already pointed out that the first part of SYS( 0 ) returns the machine (NetBIOS) name.
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>>>>Thanks for that, I was hoping to just pick a machine name or whatever, it needs to be guided by the actual physical machine IE one machine in CANNING is able to CAN TAB, a mching in weighing is able to amend WEIGHTING TAB.