UNSOLVED
Networking
Employer just provided a new Latitude 600 all set to work on company's domain and web. Brought to use at home office and attempted to network on already established home network. Can't get it to join workgroup without destroying my company's domain access. When I manually direct it to my server (printer for example) it will work until the laptop is rebooted or restarted; it seems to have forgotten it all and I have to do it again. Any ideas?
- Netswitcher's pretty easy to use. But the real issue is the security policies set up by your company's network administrators regarding adding and removing machines from their domain. You might want to discuss this with them, and see what they suggest.
Jim
jwatt
4446 Posts
97
0
Posted December 20th, 2003 16:00
Can NetSwitcher make my NT4, Windows 2000 or Windows XP Pro be a part of more than one NT DOMAIN?
This is among the most common questions asked, especially from users previously running an insecure version of Windows like Win95, 98, or ME. Strictly speaking, the answer is NO, your Windows workstation can be a member of EXACTLY 0 or 1 NT DOMAIN at any time. If you are a member of a domain and you reconfigure for a workgroup or another domain, your ability to logon the old domain is lost until the workstation is re-joined.
NetSwitcher supports the rejoining of your workstation to the domain BUT, under Windows NT, 2000, and XP Pro there is a SPECIFIC USER ACCOUNT PRIVILEGE (titled Add Workstation to Domain) that MUST be enabled on your DOMAIN USER ACCOUNT in order for you to re-join the domain. If you have this right, you can do it. If you don't have this right you CANNOT. Windows security is specifically designed to PREVENT USERS FROM DOING THINGS THEY ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO DO.
So, many ask, "why can't NetSwitcher get around this?" Well, even if it could (which it can't) that would only force Microsoft to fix whatever security hole I might have found and exploited to permit this. Others ask, "why is Windows broken in this way?". The answer is that neither Windows nor NetSwitcher is broken. This is a CHOICE determined by YOUR DOMAIN ADMINS. So in fact, it's not a technical issue at all, but rather a political or security decision made by your organization or administrators.
Some people MISTAKENLY believe that only DOMAIN ADMINS can join a workstation to the domain but that is not true. The only thing needed is the specific user right which can be simply granted to any user by the administrator.
There is an extensive write-up of this situation in the NetSwitcher HELP file under the section titled "NT DOMAIN SERVERS". If you have further questions, please refer there. You will also find some information for your administrators that may help them configure this for you.
So the bottom line for this question is a "definite maybe". If you have the rights on the domain, you CAN come and go from the domain as you please. If, however, you don't have the rights, then you CAN go, but you cannot come back without help.
Whether Netswitcher can handle joining and leaving a domain depends on the security policy set up by the domain administrators. Otherwise, Netswitcher can be a very handy product to have!
Jim