MSSQL Server Renaming Physical Host

Recently I had a server that hosts a MSSQL 2005 SQL Server named instance and the Windows group decided that the name of the server had to be changed. I thought that this may cuase an issue since the MSSQL Server name is ‘hostname\instancename’. I did a bit of research and found that a solution is available for this problem. At first I thought that I may have to reinstall a new instance of SQL Server in order to get the name correct. I did not want to go thru all of that though.

I found that MS has a couple of Stored Procs that will help with this problem.

sp_dropserver ‘hostname\instancename’ –of the old server\instancename

sp_addserver ‘hostname\instancename’, ‘local’ –of the new server\instancename

I found that when I did a select @@servername I still got the old server name returned. I also found that when I did a sp_helpserver I got the new name. I decided I would restart the server to see if that would update the @@servername variable. I right clicked on the server and said restart. After it cam back up I got a ‘NULL’ from select @@servername. I did not understand why and really still do not. I was able to resolve the issue by going to the services.msc and restarting the SQL Server Service from there. Now I see the new server name from select @@servername as well as sp_helpserver.