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Resolved Question

Locked out of Win XP Pro

Apr 19, 2014 4:51PM PDT

I changed domains from a work domain to MSHOME domain. Now my user name and password do not work to get logged into Windows. Is there a way to revert back to the work domain somehow, and get logged back in?

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VancouverDave has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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No
Apr 20, 2014 12:37AM PDT

No, when you go from a domain to a workgroup, the domain account will stop working and the only way to fix this short of reinstalling Windows is to put the machine back on the domain long enough to create a local user account.

Frankly, I know it happens all the time, but companies should not be allowing employees to buy and take home decommissioned computers that have not had the HDD formatted. Odds are there's other software on that computer, licensed to the company, which is not authorized for use in a home setting and your company could be in some serious legal trouble if this was discovered. So maybe the best thing you could do is just take the computer back to work with you one day and let the IT department have a chance to scrub it of all the software licensed only for use in the workplace and any other proprietary data they probably wouldn't want being outside the direct control of the company. They can also set you up with a local account so when they remove it from the domain it doesn't keep you from logging in.

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Answer
You mean your network connection was changed?
Apr 19, 2014 10:12PM PDT

Is this a work station located at a workplace which requires connection to a server to work properly?

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Locked out of Win XP Pro
Apr 19, 2014 11:52PM PDT

Thanks for the reply.

No. It is a work computer being used at the house for the last couple of months. I wanted to switch to the same domain (MSHOME) as the house network for print sharing. I switched from company domain to 'home' domain and now my user name and password do not work.....and it's a holiday weekend. Grrrrr!!!

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used workstations are a pain
Apr 20, 2014 9:10AM PDT

I'm surprised it worked at all anytime since you brought it home. Often they won't boot up at all unless they can connect to the work computer or "domain". You could change the setting back if you can get into SAFE MODE, but if not, then you are probably better off doing what Greystone mentioned in wiping the drive and installing a full personal operating system on it. When you boot into SAFE MODE, you may see the Admin account as an option. You could try that and don't put in any password since blank would be default. If you are lucky....(and I doubt you'd be that lucky on a workstation).

If you don't have an XP copy of your own to install, consider the latest Long Term Support installs from Ubuntu, Kubuntu (14.04) supported till 2019, or the interim Mint 16 system supported for next 9 months, or wait on the Mint 17 LTS release which should also have support till 2019. There is a Mint 13 version that is supported LTS till 2017, but there's a lot of updates you'd be doing after installing it. You can download all 3-4 systems and burn their ISO to a disc (not as data but as "image" file) and try each one out direct from the DVD disc, they are all LIVE DVD so you can boot and run all the software direct from the DVD. If you like one, then run the install program to put on the hard drive which then will keep all changes you make each session, which a LIVE version can't do since it's on "read only" media. LIVE DVD's are used for rescue disc, installation disc, and to try out the software before installation, or for the truly paranoid who want a completely anonymous system (for war driving, on the road use?)

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Not to get too far into the weeds
Apr 20, 2014 9:40AM PDT

Not to get too far into the weeds, but there are basically two kinds of domain accounts. One acts a lot like a local account and the login credentials are stored locally on the computer. The other is a roaming profile that is very similar to the "online" profiles in Windows 8. Every time you log into the computer, or any computer really, the system downloads the profile from the server.

Virtually everyone in the business world uses the first type of account. The idea of having all your personal files and settings follow you from computer to computer on any system within the domain sounds great, but if you stop and think about it for a second, it's a lot of load on the server not to mention bandwidth. It's one thing if you're shuffling all that data over a LAN, but imagine you've got people working over expensive VPN connections and they can't log in until this full profile has downloaded. Plus, aside from IT types, how many of us use more than one computer at work?

So, with a non-roaming account you can log into the thing as much as you want even if it's not connected to the domain network anymore, but once you try and move it off the domain you run into problems if you didn't set yourself up with an escape hatch in the form of a local user account. The other fun part, as I recently ran into, is that if your office enforces a policy of changing passwords regularly, sometimes Windows doesn't delete your old login credentials. That ends up creating loads of fun when you try and use things like Exchange or Lync, which authenticate off the domain server. You repeatedly get asked to provide your login and password, which seems to have odds of succeeding based on how many old login credentials you have floating around. Generally you'll exceed your limit of failed attempts and your account is automatically locked out. Great fun. All you have to do is use the built-in tool to Windows to remove all the credentials stored on the system and then log back in to create a fresh set, but it's a pain when it hits and it's not one of the more obvious things to try and track down a solution for.

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If he has the second type
Apr 20, 2014 10:55AM PDT

then he can maybe get it setup again at work, create a second local account, assign it to the home network, take it home, and use it that way. Likely has a Volume License type windows installed on it anyway though.

As for a domain, you only need to own one which is $12-20 per year from a registrar. Next item if running at home is a router where you can plug your domain name in. Then sign up for a Dynamic DNS service and let it keep track of where your domain can be found by others each day or anytime the home IP address changes. Third item of course is a computer which contains the software you want to use for presenting the webpages for your domain, and any other services you wish to provide on it to special users, such as FTP capabilities, even mail server.

The downside of doing that way is your local service provider. They may have certain ports blocked, especially mail ports, and there's the increase of bandwidth that will happen and draw their attention to you running an unapproved server on their system.

For me it's just easier to pay a small monthly charge and rent space, bandwidth on someone else's server.

It is possible he's confused a workgroup with a domain server, but a lot of businesses do use domains, especially for those working from home and needing access to the server at work. That's the process my wife used in her previous employment.

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Different kind of domain
Apr 20, 2014 1:08PM PDT

Different kind of domain. The domain the OP needs is the one created by ActiveDirectory which is only available as part of Windows Server. You could try setting up a Linux box using SAMBA or possibly even some other LDAP system, and it MIGHT work, but I wouldn't really go getting my hopes up for either of those solutions working. Not to mention setting up either of those servers can be rather involved, even if you know what you're doing.

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That's not a domain
Apr 20, 2014 9:29AM PDT

That's not a domain, it's a workgroup. A domain requires a centralized server that costs some serious money and allows you to administer a large group of systems from a central location. A workgroup is just a kind of loose association of computers for the purposes of sharing files and printers.

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Your mistake was;
Apr 20, 2014 11:11AM PDT

....not just setting up a network connection to your home LAN and never touching anything that had to do with the domain connection.

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Locked out of Win XP
Apr 20, 2014 12:15AM PDT

You can say the network connection has changed in the settings. I still have the same internet connection here at the house. (wireless)

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what happens when you try to change it back?
Apr 20, 2014 11:02AM PDT

please also note Greystone's distinction and some of my explanation of the difference between a workgroup and a domain for access. A domain access is done across the internet, a home is Local Area Network and internal IP addresses are assigned to each computer. You can actually have both set up on a computer, each a different connection with it's own properties. A domain is when you contact a computer at a website such as www.website.com, or www.website.org for example.

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See my other post
Apr 20, 2014 1:09PM PDT

See my other post. You're thinking of an entirely different kind of domain.

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Answer
odd thought
Apr 20, 2014 9:14AM PDT

you could take it back to work, plug into office LAN, see if you can reset it there to what you were able to use before. Alternate is beg one of the IT guys.

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Won't work
Apr 20, 2014 9:45AM PDT

Won't work. You need someone with an account that has sufficient access to add a computer to a domain. So there's no getting around involving the company IT people unless you've got your own copy of an OS you can slap on. It'll probably only take them 5-10 minutes to add it back to the domain, create a local user account, then take it back off the domain, but they really should do a full audit of the software on the unit. Quite probably even the Windows license is a site license as opposed to the one that came with the unit. If the OP is really lucky, they never wiped out the recovery partition for the unit and it can be restored back to factory spec so that the OP needn't involve the IT people at his place of work at all. Otherwise, short of a spare copy of Windows floating around or using Linux, there's nothing the OP's doing without involving the IT staff at work.

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Answer
You have to log inusing this format for domain
Apr 20, 2014 9:48PM PDT

Username@Domain Name or Domain Name\username

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Which sadly won't work
Apr 20, 2014 11:57PM PDT

Which sadly won't work if they've already gone in and removed the system from the domain in the system properties. Windows doesn't think it is part of that domain anymore, so it won't let you use that account to log in. There is essentially no getting around the OP taking it back to work and throwing themselves at the mercy of the IT people who should have taken care of all of this before they let the OP out the door with the thing, quite frankly.