Leaving domain / user account

Question

I have a laptop that joined a domain here in my home network and I login as \mydomain\myuser I want to remove it from the domain but keep the \myuser account, since it has all of my application settings and user settings.

Is there a way to un-join the domain and still use the account with keeping my settings?

System: Windows XP, SP3

Thanks... John

Answer 1

There's probably more than one way to do it... but this is the method I've had success with

Create the local user account myuser now. Migrate the settings following this article: http://msmvps.com/blogs/clustering/archive/2004/10/06/15096.aspx. Then unjoin from the domain.

Answer 2

The other way of doing this is to create a different, local admin account on the laptop. And then simply copy profiles over each other. Right click on My computer -> Properties. Choose Advanced Tab, and click SETTINGS in the "User Profiles" section. And simply copy settings from your domain profile on you local one.

Please note, you would need to REBOOT you computer before doing so.

Answer 3

I'm a real fan of Forensit User Profile Manager for projects like that. You can take the system off of the domain and then simply point your local user to the domain profile using their tool.