change from domain to workgroup

[Manser]

Hi folks,

i inherited a laptop from my former company and i wanted to integrate
it in my
home lan.
i could login with my username and password although the laptop was
powered on locally (no connection to the domain)
i have done the following:
give it an ip address through the LAN adapter, and
In Control Panel/Settings/System I changed from 'domain' to
'workgroup' and now I can't log on. When Windows starts, it asks for a
username and password. It won't accept my previous password and
username, or the name of the workgroup with my previous password.

so i logged on with administrator and tried to change the setting back
i.e Control Panel/settings/system from workgroup to the old domain
name.
i could't.


Question Nr. 1:

Why could i login with my domain username although i was disconnected
from the domain. (i was at home), where was this information stored ?


someone told me that i must reconnect to the company's network
and contact the domain admin to reregister the computer back to the
domain.
but this is impossible since i have changed the company.

what i want is getting access to my old desktop icons from my former
username:
all the programms i used were stored on my local disk.
i have found the shortcuts on my local disk under
c:\documents and settings\<old domain username>\desktop\*.*
i thought the following approach:
i create a local account with the same name than on the domain.

Question Nr. 2:

will the content c:\documents and settings\<old domain
username>\desktop\*.*
be overwritten ?

i need to get access to one programm, but i could not start it with
administrator, i exits with the following error: initialisation
failure.
i think it expects that i run the programm with my old username.

Question Nr. 3:

How can get the programm started to restore my addressbook ?

I would appreciate your help very much

 

[Steven L Umbach]

By default a domain computer is able to logon with "cached credentials" for
a domain user when a domain controller can not be contacted and you can not
rejoin the domain unless it can contact a domain controller at which time
you may be prompted for administrator credentials for the domain anyway.

Since you can log on as the local administrator, consider yourself lucky. I
would suggest logging on as local administrator and copying your old domain
profile over to a new user that you create [other than what you are logged
on as]. You should be able to access most everyting in your old profile
then. I am not sure if that will help with the application though but it may
help to name the new user the same as your domain user account. See the link
below on copying a profile and be sure to give the proper user [your new
local account] permissions to the profile in the "permitted to use" box when
you select copy to. --- Steve

http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/CCC/Help/Software/Windows/Win2000/profilecopying.html