[Peter Mac]

I am doing some work at an office that lost a Windows 2000 server.

It appears to me that the Windows XP Pro clients all created local domain accounts as a result of once logging into a Windows 2000 server.

I have a temporary Windowx XP Pro server I want to use as a file server.
The problems are:

Problem 1: I disconnected two users from the domain since the domain server was down. the problem is I lost their user accounts. Because the machines had a local domain account built because it was once connected to a domain I can't seem to get that user account back. I tried to make it reconnect to the local domain but it seems to want to find a domain controller (which no longer exists) in order to do this. is it possible just to tell the machine to join a local domain (that PC only) to get my user account back? Any ideas?

Problem 2: My temporary server (Windows XP Pro machine) also has a local domain account. None of my other computers can connect to it to share files. I think it's because I don't have a domain controller and the XP pro machine wants to validate user accounts connecting to it which don't exist.

It seems my best solution is to have everyone leave the domain and just be a workgroup for now, but I don't want to lose my other logins as happened in Problem 1.

I hope all of this makes sense.

Peter

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I'm afraid you're in a bind. Unless you provide local accounts for your users, the only solution is to make them leave the said domain. Local accounts can be added in the computer management console. Of course, you'll need to create said user account for each computer, so you should consider a batch file to create the user for you.

Furthermore... The reason you "lost" user accounts is almost certainly related to the fact that the DC is down. If that DC was also carrying the roaming profiles (which it sounds like it did), then of course the accounts wont work on a station a user has never logged onto before.

Keep the users at their stations as it was prior to the server failiure/removal, as their roaming profiles are already loaded on their stations, they will use the domain accoutns but locally. If they need to log onto another PC, then you'll need local accounts. I believe this is the best solution for now.

As for seeing the share... Could you give in more detail what you mean by "none of my other computers can connect to it to share files" ?

Good luck,
Joe.

[Vaillant]

I'm afraid you're in a bind. Unless you provide local accounts for your users, the only solution is to make them leave the said domain. Local accounts can be added in the computer management console. Of course, you'll need to create said user account for each computer, so you should consider a batch file to create the user for you.

Furthermore... The reason you "lost" user accounts is almost certainly related to the fact that the DC is down. If that DC was also carrying the roaming profiles (which it sounds like it did), then of course the accounts wont work on a station a user has never logged onto before.

Keep the users at their stations as it was prior to the server failiure/removal, as their roaming profiles are already loaded on their stations, they will use the domain accoutns but locally. If they need to log onto another PC, then you'll need local accounts. I believe this is the best solution for now.

As for seeing the share... Could you give in more detail what you mean by "none of my other computers can connect to it to share files" ?

Good luck,
Joe.

[Peter Mac]

I figured out one of my problems. My workstations couldn't see the new XP server because they were all logged in as administrator so the XP server rejected them. I created new user accounts with admin privileges and they all connected. I learned if the XP server is logged in as admin it will reject anyone else trying to log in as admin.

Now, for my first problem.

The domain in the office was called "DOMAIN"
Here's the quirky thing--on some of the computers they can still login to "DOMAIN" with their domain user names.
However, when I go to user accounts on the local machine, the login they are using doesn't exist.
It seems to me that the user name and password are stored somewhere else (or someplace on the workstation I can't see)

I don't understand how a user can login to a phantom domain. I also don'tunderstand where their user names and passwords are stored if the domain controller is down.
Somehow they are logging into what they think is the old domain with a user name I can't see in the workstation user accounts.

[Peter Mac]

I have another problem with the lost domain.
One of our users connected to the Windows 2000 Exchange server.
When I open Outlook he can no longer connect to the Exchange server so Outlook gives an error message he can't connect to the Exchange server and OUtlook closes. How do I reconfigure Outlook to work with a POP3 account until I can get the Exchange server back online?

Outlook won't give me the option to change the settings--it just closes after giving an error message.
Right now the only option I see is to uninstall the Outlook client to bypass the error message.

Edited by Peter Mac, 13 February 2008 - 04:01 AM.