Remove domian group policy from local computer account

[Matt Webb]

A laptop was a hand me down from a friends wives school. This laptop
was a memeber their domain. We have only the local admin password,
whose rights are slightly restricted. Thats the problem. The domain
the laptop was a part of had a group policy applied to it that affected
the local administrator account. I cannot access the Computer Name tab
in the System Properties windows to remove the computer from the
domain. Tells me my rights are restricted and cant do that. I cant
get the domain admin password and I reinstalling the OS is not an
acceptable solution.

How can I remove the group policy that is restricting the local
administrator account?

Is it possible to Join or Unjoin a domain via command line? If there
is a command line utility that allows this, it is possible this tool is
still available and not restricted from the group policy. If this is
possible, would this remove the group policy from the local admin
account?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Kurt]

You can unjoin the domain by right-clicking "My Computer", select
"Properties", go to the "Computer Name" tab, click "Change" and put it in a
workgroup. This alone may not be enough. You may need to go into local
policies and definitively reverse the policies that were put in place via
domain GPOs. I'm sorry re-installing is not acceptable - if it were mine,
that's what I'd do. Then I'd have a nice, clean install ready to run "my
way".

....kurt

 

[Matt Webb]

Thanks Kurt,
Unfortunatly when I Right click, My Computer I get the error that I
dont have permissions to modify anything here. Only option is OK. Im
logged in as local administrator too. Id love to reinstall can't
though.