Domain login on Laptop

pablo21

Help! While testing a network here in the UK I stupidly took my laptop off the domain and now I cant login into it at all! I changed it to the local workgroup and of course it rebooted and now there is no domain to verify the login or no option to logon to the machine itself. I thought safe mode might give me the administrator logon to the machine itself but of course NO! Any ideas how I'll get to logon to this machine? All help greatly appreciated!

Gryzor

i'm assuming xp or 2000, and that you're away from your own domain???

in that case you're a bit snookered, unless you have access to a local account, admin or otherwise, then you can't login to the machine again, till you get back to you're own domain

do you just need some data from it, or do you need it to access apps etc??

pablo21

I'll be back on the home network tommorow but my worry now is because its on a workgroup instead of a domain, that I wont be able to log onto either!

ethernet

This may be a bit drastic, but have you tried a system restore? It *may* restore the domain settings.

Gryzor

pablo21 wrote:

I'll be back on the home network tommorow but my worry now is because its on a workgroup instead of a domain, that I wont be able to log onto either!

once you cnnect to your own network, an admin can log in to join you to the domain again...you'll be grand

pablo21

Thanks for the sugestions guys but I'm probably not explaining this correctly..

I cant do a system restore because I cant logon to the machine at all. They're are only username and password fields, no domain or machine selection. Therefore the Domain admin password is not getting me anywhere.
Can I add the machine via the server maybe? I am the network admin btw and I'm scratching my head on this one!

Gryzor

you need the local admin account details for the machine, as a domain admin you should be able to get your hands on this??

you won't be able to log onto the laptop with any domain account, until its added back into the domain again...

pablo21

I should be able to but due to the way the machine joined the network I dont!
Is there any other way around it?

Gryzor

pablo21 wrote:

I should be able to but due to the way the machine joined the network I dont!

not sure what you mean here

call whoever installed windows on the machine.....get the local admin account details from them (they should trust a domain admin with them)....then you can log in....u'll still need to be on your home network to add it back onto the domain , so you can log in with your own account...

seamus

Once the machine has been removed from the Domain, any domain credentials are useless, and can't be used to log onto the machine.

You can't join the domain without being logged on as a local admin on the machine. To join the domain requires the trust to be set up by both the client and the domain, so although you can manually create the machine in the domain, the machine itself won't connect to the domain without you telling it to.

I can see three options. All involve removing the primary hard disk.

1. Use a password cracker to find/reset the local administrator password on the machine.

2. Copy all of the data off the drives and reinstall Windows.

3. See if it's possible to "force" windows to join a domain by changing registry settings. That is, plug the hard disk into another machine, open the registry clusters, add in the necessary registry settings for the domain, plug the disk back in and boot up.

Number 3 is a long shot. You should probably only attempt it (I don't even know if it's possible), if option 2 is your only other option.

pablo21

seamus wrote:

Once the machine has been removed from the Domain, any domain credentials are useless, and can't be used to log onto the machine.

You can't join the domain without being logged on as a local admin on the machine. To join the domain requires the trust to be set up by both the client and the domain, so although you can manually create the machine in the domain, the machine itself won't connect to the domain without you telling it to.

I can see three options. All involve removing the primary hard disk.

1. Use a password cracker to find/reset the local administrator password on the machine.

2. Copy all of the data off the drives and reinstall Windows.

3. See if it's possible to "force" windows to join a domain by changing registry settings. That is, plug the hard disk into another machine, open the registry clusters, add in the necessary registry settings for the domain, plug the disk back in and boot up.

Number 3 is a long shot. You should probably only attempt it (I don't even know if it's possible), if option 2 is your only other option.

Seamus I think your right! Gryzor I'm probably not explaining it correctly, I dont have the local admin password for the machine because its just a laptop that was added to the network before I started here and there is no record of what that password is!
Seamus, where would I get a password cracker? Any ideas? I can comfortably remove and the hard drive allright and I have a caddy to read it.
Thanks for all the suggestions!

Gryzor

ah right....on the cracker...google is your friend ...not sure a link can be posted here??

windowlicker

[URL=████████[/URL]

if you have access to bios set it to boot from cd and you could use this live cd.

Please Read the charter. /CM

Capt'n Midnight

seamus wrote:

I can see three options. All involve removing the primary hard disk.

1. Use a password cracker to find/reset the local administrator password on the machine.

2. Copy all of the data off the drives and reinstall Windows.

3. See if it's possible to "force" windows to join

tsk tsk - suggesting cracking :rolleyes:

4. linux boot disk that RESETS the local admin password. http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

very handy for when system restore rolls back too far.

The IT people should have the local admin password too ?

Just a reminder to all - cracking passwords is a no no here, people use them for other things. Password reset disk is OK because if you have physical access to a windows machine you can read all the unencrypted files with a dos boot disk and ntfsdos.

pablo21

THanks for that! Apologies for pushing towards the cracking but it was panic stations for a bit! Resetting the password is fine! I tried one login recovery tool yesterday and it didnt work. I have the admin password for every other machine on the network bar this bloody laptop! It was just used to drive a plotter for sign writing and I just added it to the domain to keep control of it, of course no clue what the password was, I just assumed it would be blank on admin! Silly me! Thanks for all the help.