Can't access self

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charles P. Lamb
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Charles P. Lamb

I am using Windows 2000 Professional. I recently had my system disk
fail. Luckily I had made backups of the system disk and the registry
onto the other drive. I followed the procedure in Knowledge Base
Article 249694, installing a new copy of Windows 2000 and then
restoring the backed up disk and registry. When I try to log onto the
Administrator account I get themessage, "The system cannot log you on
now because the domain XXX is not available.", where XXX is the name
of the local machine. This is puzzling because I thought I was
storing the profile locally. I have another installation on the same
disk which does allow me to login so I loaded the software hive from
C:\WINNT\system32\config\software. I
looked at the key Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and
there was only one SID entry. I looked in it and confirmed that
ProfileImagePath was set to "%SystemRoot%\Profiles\Administrator". I
then looked on the disk and saw that C:\WINNT\Profiles\Adminstrator
existed and seemed to contain everything I'd expect.
I've discovered that it is getting the domain name "XXX" for the
message from the registry entry
system\ControlSet001Control\ComputerName\ComputerName\ComputerName .
I discovered this when I tried changing this entry and the name in
the message changed along with it.

Any ideas on how to solve this problem?

Thanks,

Charles P. Lamb
 
Was this machine a member of a domain at one time?? That is what it seems to me or it
thinks it was as that message indicates that a domain controller could not be found
which would be required for a logon unless there was at least on cached logon for
your account. Double check to see if there is an option to logon to the local
machine - this computer in the logon dropdown box.

That KB gave me a headache to read and made me a real believer in full backups/Ghost
images. Your description makes me believe you had a hard disk failure versus an
operating system major crash. If possible try to copy your system backup to a new
drive and then boot from the W2K install disk and try an in place upgrade which may
work [ by reconfiguring plug and pray if need be ] but require reinstall of first
service pack and then critical updates. I won't hazard a guess as to why your current
repair is not working. At least you have your profile in case you have to do a fresh
install. --- Steve

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q292175
 
Yes, you are right. The electronics in the disk drive failed and I
replaced it with an entirely different drive. Unfortunately, there is
no drop down box with options. I don't believe the system was a
member of a domain. It was a stand-alone home computer which was
connected to the internet using Comcast as an IP. I don't think this
would make it a domain member. Would it?

Thanks,

Charles P. Lamb
 
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