I have an existing server on my network that is running under windows 2000 with SQL Server 2000 on it. We are in the process of moving the server to a windows 2008 platform, with SQL 2008 as well. A few changes are happening though. For one, applications that were on the old server, will now be on a new application server. The issue is, the developers of the original applications hard coded the server name in the apps and/or batch files. I could change all the code, but that would require weeks of work.

My original idea was to change the hosts and lmhosts files to point to the new servers with a different IP. So i implemented the following where oldserver was the original server and server is the new one brought online:

hosts:
192.168.1.10 oldserver
192.168.1.15 server

lmhosts:
192.168.1.10 oldserver #pre
192.168.1.15 server #pre

Problem is, when i try to do this, i get the following errors:

\\server\c$
Logon Failure : The target account name is incorrect.

and

\\oldserver\c$
A duplicate name exists on the network.

I know about renaming servers in AD, but can't do so yet as the original server is in production and i cannot rename it without breaking a lot of things at the moment. I'm wanting to do a proof of concept to the management before renaming the servers. Any idea how i should resolve this?