Strange message: the name of your computer ***** is already in use.....

This message keeps recurring. "the name of your computer "Computer Name" is in use on this network. The name has been changed to "Computer Name2".
+to change the name of your computer, open System Preferences and click on Sharing, then type in the Computer Name field.+
Okay, this keeps recurring and changing the name to 3,4,5, so on until I follow the instructions and rename it in Pref. This just started recently. It will behave itself after a full shutdown, reset pmu and zap the pram. But it won't last long.
Anybody have this happen?

Greetings,
If the computer you speak of is in an Active Directory Domain, your problem could be there, if the computer has been removed at some point - the original name could still be in the database. Contact your IT folks and let them know of the duplicate name.
Otherwise, there must be another computer with the same name, connected to the same network as you. The only other possibility would be some Netbios/DNS caching on your router, a server/workstation being used as a router, etc.
Run the maintenance routines - "sudo dscacheutil -flushcache", this will flush the DNS cache out, and then you could run - "sudo periodic daily weekly monthly". Without the quotes. The second one will take about 15 minutes or so. You may or may not need the sudo command on the first one.
This will clear the caches out and there will be noting erroneous to reference.
If you change the name, does it still do that? You can always rename it back, if you need to.
Cheers,
M.

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