what i posted was a proof of concept; if you need to add the catalog to an existing linked server, then yes, you'll need to drop and recreate.

if you are creating new linked servers for testing (my examples) no need to drop the existing.

you most likely have code like this as well, so consider that in your scripting as well:

EXEC master.dbo.sp_addlinkedsrvlogin @rmtsrvname = N'MyLinkedServer',

@useself = N'true',

@locallogin = NULL,

@rmtuser = N'sa',

@rmtpassword = 'NotARealPassword';