Joining a Stand-Alone XP Pro computer to a Win 03 domain

From: Brian (anonymous_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 02/20/04 

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 15:42:06 -0800

If you are actually authenticating to the AD Domain
controller and your user account will reside on the D/C
and not locally on your PC, than go into the User Profile
settings (System Properties) and copy your user profile
into the Default User (by default this profile is hidden,
therefore, you have to show all file prior to attempting
this). Now, with administrative access go into the
Computer Name tab of System Properties and click
the "Change" button and type in the domain name to become
a member of the domain, once again you will have to have
administrative credentials to perform this task. You
should receive a "Welcome to the NT Domain" message. You
will be prompted to reboot the computer for the changes to
take effect, once you reboot, and you have already setup
your personal user account on the D/C; you should be able
to type in these credentials and successfully login into
the D/C; at which point the profile from "Default User"
will become your new profile. Under User Accounts in
Control Panel you will not see this user, however, if you
look under c:\document and settings you should see a user
account representing a domain user.

Kind of tricky the first time, but after a couple times
you'll get the hang of it.

Hope this helps.

Brian

>-----Original Message-----
>A quick (and hopefully simple) question.
>
>I have a XP Pro computer that I have been working on as a
>stand-alone for over a year. Lots of files in my stand-
>alone logins.
>
>I wish to (temporarly) join a Win 2003 server AD domain,
>basically for practice (I have an Evaluation copy of the
>Win 2003 Server and am studing for my MCSE).
>
>If I join this domain, will I lose all of my stand-alone
>files? I remember something like this happening to me
>before with Win2K.
>.
>