I'm having a problem with a computer at work. The computer is a dell optiplex gx270 it runs windows xp pro sp3. It is part of the office domain. A few days ago there was a problem shutting it down cleanly. As a result the person just hit the power button to shut the pc off. After that when the computer started it would boot and go through the windows start up but would when you tried to hit ctrl-alt-del to log in nothing would happen. There was absolutely no way to log on. I tried doing a manual rollback of the registry to a few days before the initial incident but that didn't help. I was forced to repair the installation by reinstalling xp with the original system disk. It was a repair, the hard drive wasn't reformatted. The reinstall went fine when you started the pc and hit ctrl-alt-del the user's logon name was displayed and even the correct domain. But when he put his password in we get this error: Windows cannot connect to the domain, either because the domain controller is down or otherwise unavailable or because your computer account was not found. We tried giving the person a new password but that didn't help. When I tried to connect to the computer from the Windows server 2003 Small business edition using terminal services I received an error Access denied. Unfortunately the person who used to take care of the computers has forgotten the passwords for the local user and administrator accounts on the pc. I'm new to this but here is what I plan to do. Use ntpasswd to blank the administrator's password so that I can get onto windows xp. Am I correct in assuming that once logged on I'll be able to rejoin the domain with out much fuss? Also, under manage computers in Server Management the computer is still listed. Will that entry have to be deleted and a new one made once I get into the windows xp computer? The server is running windows server 2003 small business editon. the whole domain is made up of only about 6 computers. TIA for any info. If you need any additional info I'll be happy to tell you what I know

Hello, if i am not wrong there is a wizard in SBS to join computers to the domain, please check within the SBS forums/newsgroups as listed here: www.sbs2008.com There are the SBS experts.Best regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I'm having a similar issue. I actually suspect it's a naming conflict in my case even though there are no other comps with the same name - it's happened before but this time I don't know the local login to get in and change the computer name. I'm going to try what you're doing to override the local admin password.

Followup - ntpasswd blanked the administrator password so I could log in, but changing the computer name still didn't let me log into the domain. Not going to bother fixing, the system needs a fresh install for other reasons so I've got all the data off it and reinstalling.