Best way to add laptop to domain

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ed
  • Start date Start date
E

Ed

I hope this group is the best place to ask this question. I am a
minister and purchased a new laptop computer for both personal and
professional use. At home, I will connect it to our home network and
run Quicken, email, internet, etc. At work, we have a domain (Windows
2003) network. I will dock my laptop at work and want to access this
network and its resources.

My question is this. If I use my domain user name and password on the
laptop as the only login method, then the profile and subsequent user
files (My Documents) will all be in a series of subdirectories
connected with the domain name but on the local machine. (Right?) If I
leave the church and go to a new church with it own domain, or none,
and they can't use the same user name I had at the last church, where
do all of may documents and user setings go?

Is there a way to set up a local user account that, when I dock it at
work, can access the domain network.

Is this clear? I'm not a computer networking wiz but I can't seem to
find an answer . The bottom line, is I'm looking for portability with
my laptop (since it's mine) from domain to domain without losing my
local documents and settings when I move.

Thanks,

Ed
 
Which version of Vista is running on the laptop? If it is Vista Home
Basic or Vista Home Premium then it won't play on a domain. You need
Vista Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate.
 
It's Vista Business.

I've been trying to find better ways to describe what I wrote last
night. (Maybe I want my cake and to eat it too!) I guess my ultimate
goal is to have one account on my local computer that can utilize the
domain resources (and internet) at work and then be portable when I
move to another church that may or may not have a server based domain
network running. I can setup two accounts, one to access the domain
and one solely on my local machine, but I don't want to have to access
two different accounts at work and at home. Plus, I'll have two
profiles with two different My Documents directories. It seems to me
to be a headache having to find documents (is it in the server based
profile 'My Documents' directory or is it in my local machine based
profile 'My Documents' directory?) A fear is that if I use only the
domain based profile, if I leave the church (the domain) then I could
lose all of the data in that profile. Since I'll be running Quicken,
it would be a disaster to lose that data.

A few questions
-- can a domain based account be moved to a local machine when I leave
so that I don't lose all of the data in that profile?
-- is there a way to setup a local profile on the laptop that, when I
dock at the church (the server network) I can log on to the domain
from within the local profile?

I hope this helps.

Ed
 
You would probably be better off having two accounts. A local one for
personal use and then the domain account for your office at church. You can
NOT use your old domain account to logon to a new domain. In order for a
computer to work correctly on a domain it has to be joined to the domain.
When you go to a new church with a different domain you will have to join
it's domain and leave the other one removing the old domain accounts from
your computer.

Jeff
 
Could I create a local user account with the same user name as on the
domain? Would that at least allow me to have one set of files
(documents, outlook .pst, favorites, desktop, etc) on the laptop.
 
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