the system cannot log you on now because the domain.. is not avail

[Guest]

Yesterday I received the above message when trying to login to a computer
running XP Pro.

It is fully up-to-date with patches and is protected by ZoneAlarm firewall
and antivirus. It is only 4 months old. No new software or patches have been
downloaded in the week before the problem arose.

It is connected to a small home network (setup as a workgroup rather than a
domain). None of the computers have ever been connected to any other networks.

I cannot login at all in the normal fashion. I only have one user profile
which has administrator level access. I have been using auto-logon - but
turning it off makes no difference. I can login in Safe Mode under either the
normal profile or the Admin profile. Interestingly, even when I do this with
Networking enabled I still can't access my network or the internet.

I have tried to do a system restore (no impact). I contacted Microsoft
Support and they could not assist and suggested I escalate to level 2 support
(at a cost). I contacted Dell and after a few suggestions they said that I do
a full system restore. I'm happy to do this and do have backups etc. but
would prefer to avoid the hassle!

I wondered if this error might reflect a corrupted User Profile? I suggest
this as (and I am not an IT specialist) it seems that the computer name IS
the domain when it is stand-alone/ in a workgroup? I may try to create a new
one and see what happens.

Any assistance or advice that can be offered would be appreciated.

 

[Steven L Umbach]

I have heard of that happening but have not heard of an easy resolution to
the problem for when a workgroup computer thinks it belongs to a domain one
day. My guess is that there was some sort of registry corruption in HKLM. It
would not be user profile related since user profile is not loaded or
referenced until a user is authenticated. If you said that you can boot into
Safe Mode with networking then go to system properties/computer name -
change and see if it shows domain or workgroup. Whatever it shows try to use
workgroup with a different name from what is used now for whatever is shown
and if prompted for credentials enter your administrator credentials.

If that does not help or work and no one has a better idea you could try
using the suggestions in the KB article below to repair a corrupt registry.
The operating system keeps a copy of the original installation registry
configuration in the \windows\repair folder. I have not tried the methods
listed in the KB but it may work and it may require that you reinstall some
applications as they would not be included in the original copy of the
registry unless the restore/copy of registry settings from System Restore
remedies that. It may even be possible that your password no longer works if
the SAM is also restored from the original. If that happens try using a
blank password for the administrator account or see the second link below on
how to proceed. Once you get things resolved I highly recommend that you do
a backup of the System State of your operating system and do one on a fairly
regular basis which will backup critical registry settings. Just search Help
for System State on how to do that. Another thing I do is to keep an image
backup of my system partition using Ghost. Ghost is available on some
versions of Symantec System Works and others may suggest a free image
program as I don't know of a good one offhand. I can restore my 7G system
partition in about 6 minutes.

Steve

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545
http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm