Joining Multiple Domains in Windows 7

Question

I'm an independent contractor with domain accounts at multiple client locations. I do my development work on a laptop and would like to be able to join the domain at each site. Under Windows XP I joined one domain and mapped drives/VNC'ed into the others. There are two that I visit at least once a week, so I would like a painless way to switch between the two. Anyone know how to do this in Windows 7 Pro?

Answer 1

As far as I am aware Windows 7 does not provide any better features for dealing with multiple domains than XP did, so your probably best to continue the way you have been.

One option would be to install XP mode or a VM and join your Windows XP machine to the other domain, which will give you a little more integration. As Windows 7 also allows you to boot to VM, so you could run a VM for each domain.

Answer 2

I visit a number of different Customer sites each week, and I prefer not to join my personal machine to any of my Customers' domains (to not have thier group policy apply, etc).

If you're just mapping drives, why not just use a script w/ credentials stored in the script to map the drives:

@echo off
net use x: /d
net use x: \\server\share /USER:DOMAIN\username password

Run the appropriate script for each site. No domain membership necessary.

Answer 3

Sounds like a really bad idea to join customer domains with equipment that isn't owned by the customer. That sort of thing has been a serious security policy violation at every employer that I have worked for.

If you must, just spin up VMs for each customer, or ask the customer to provide you with a PC.

Answer 4

runas /netonly

TIP: How to Run Programs as a Domain User from a Non-domain Computer

For example:

runas /netonly /user:domain\username “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe”`

As I stated in my question, my current solution included using mapped drives (via net use) at one location. However, as I pointed out in a comment to my question, windows network authentication reqts for SQL server were driving me towards actually joining the domain.

After much googling I finally came across this gem: http://www.olegsych.com/2009/05/crossing-domain-boundaries-windows-authentication/ I had tried doing a shift-right click Run As Different User already, but I received an error message about a failed trust relationship. The key was the /netonly switch. Using runas /netonly opened my programs without the error message but with windows authentication in place for the linked database tables.

Answer 5

Have you considered using VMs for this purpose? Create a VM for each of the domains and switch between them on demand.

Answer 6

The simple answer is that you cannot. A machine can only be in one domain at a time. The Microsoft way to deal with this would be for you to have your own domain, and for each of these other domains to trust yours. Good luck convincing your customers to do this, even for one-way trust.

You might get better help at superuser or serverfault.

Answer 7

Gosh, I am a System Administrator and a user who joins a foreign domain with our equipment will get a warning letter. For example we push a local admin user to each domain member via domain policy. This would be a very big security whole if someone got a local admin user from a foreign domain. Let's think about that for a moment... Further more has a member of the domain admin group full access to your filesystem then. That's also no good idea. shaking head Mabe you should ask your admins for permission ;)

Answer 8

No, Windows 7 is identical to Windows XP in regards to joining multiple domains. Very poor form on MS behalf, We have been asking this for a long time.