Moving from Corporate WAN to Home LAN Causes Validation Problems

ID: Q228146

This article discusses a Beta release of a Microsoft product. The information in this article is provided as-is and is subject to change without notice.

No formal product support is available from Microsoft for this Beta product. For information about obtaining support for a Beta release, please see the documentation included with the Beta product files, or check the Web location from which you downloaded the release.

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0

SUMMARY

No method exists for logging on to multiple secure Windows domains or workgroups while moving from location to location with a portable computer. When you take a portable computer away from a secure Microsoft Windows NT domain and reconfigure the computer to log on to a workgroup or secure domain at another location, it is not possible to return to the original secure domain and reconfigure the machine account without administrative rights, or a call to your network administrator. Moving a portable computer from a corporate network to a home network causes machine account problems in a enterprise network.

MORE INFORMATION

Only administrators have the necessary rights to add machine accounts to a domain. Most users will have to ask a domain administrator to return the machine account to the domain. The current design is that only an administrator can change the domain to which a Windows 2000-based or Windows NT-based computer belongs.

If your situation requires users to log on to various domains, you can establish trust relationships between the various domains. If all the domains are in a Windows 2000 tree, the trusts are transitive and there is no special configuration required. For additional information about computer accounts in Windows 2000, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q222525 Automating the Creation of Computer Accounts in Windows 2000

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbenv kbnetwork
Version : WINDOWS:2000; winnt:3.1,3.5,3.51,4.0
Platform : WINDOWS winnt
Issue type : kbinfo