Windows 8 Pro - Domain change option greyed out in System Properties

I recently upgraded a laptop to Windows 8 Pro from Windows 8 Standard.  The sole reason I upgraded to Pro was to be able to join to my companies domain, but when I go to switch from the default workgroup to the domain in System Properties, the entire domain box is completely grayed out and inaccessible.  I am running the command from a local administrator account on the computer with the appropriate permissions, not from a Live ID.  I can access everything on the network just fine (aside from the network drives, obviously,) and I can ping to the DNS server and get to the Internet.  There are no connectivity problems.

The upgrade was successful the first attempt, and as far as I know there were no files corrupted in the process. My guess is that there is some configuration file that the upgrade failed to change somewhere, but I'm really not sure what exactly the issue is.

Thanks.

November 23rd, 2012 11:51pm

Hi,

Please run Services.msc and navigate to Workstation service; ensure the service is enabled and started, or restart the service. Then try again.

Thanks.
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November 26th, 2012 12:13pm

Hi,

Please run Services.msc and navigate to Workstation service; ensure the service is enabled and started, or restart the service. Then try again.

Thanks.

Any other options? This did not work?
November 29th, 2012 8:04pm

... but when I go to switch from the default workgroup to the domain in System Properties, the entire domain box is completely grayed out and inaccessible.  I am running the command from a local administrator account on the computer with the <strike>appropriate permissions</strike>, not from a Live ID. 

Try using a domain administrator account (regarding appropriate permissions for network administration).

The local administrator account only has administrative access to local resources on the PC - i.e. does not have administrative privileges on the network

Regarding access and use of a domain administrator account:
I.e. you're a user at your company - so you should contact your companys system administrator regarding company policy.

I.e. if this is BYOD (your own device) it will probably not be joined to the domain.
If its a company workstation (laptop) - he will rejoin it to the domain.

As a rule of thumb - and may be confusing you here, do not expect yourself - even though a superuser with local administrative privileges - to finalize redeployment of windows, apps and data in a company domain. I.e. in a company you usually don't control access to payrolls etc. (you should not have that kind of administrative configuration access - even if a company owner you could mess things up giving "unauthorized" access. Even a domain administrative account is not used as a "user" account - only configuration). I.e. with user accounts i.e. local administrator you don't control access to private network ressources in the company. I.e. you cannot join network ressources - joining to a domain means connecting with the private web service in the company basically controlling identification and internal access to company wide resources. So that service hides some complexity as well.  

Delegate the job to your companys system administrator and let him complete the work if this is a company workstation
... that you may have reinstalled yourself using the local administrator account without using the companys deployment services - i.e. automated deployment (i.e. PXE network boot to the companys Windows Deployment Services or Symantec Altiris etc.). If no automated deployment is available at your company then the component (responsibility) of deployment services are manually executed by  the system administrator (automated deployment availability at your company will typically depend upon complexity i.e. the number of computers owned by your company - but even for a small number of workstations the benefit of Windows Deployment Services is great ...)

Basically, the finalization of software configuration for a company managed computer must in part be managed by the system administrator, i.e. rejoining the computer to a domain - which effectively means the administration of the computer from this point on is delegated to the domain controller and thus automated management of i.e. authentication and authorizations.



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November 30th, 2012 4:23am

I'm ITS Associate II from my company, and I have appropriate permissions for our network.  I'm in process of creating an image of laptop/tablets via network PXE.  The problem we are having is that Domain is greyed out and no local users & groups.  We have Win8 Pro 64-bit.  The install is currently on an XPS 12", and is our testing machine before we order any more, or do a major roll out of the OS. 

So far we've done a complete clean install of the OS, and still no luck.  

December 11th, 2012 8:13am

I am having the same problem with a brand new Lenovo Yogapad 11S. I just installed Windows 8 Pro 32bit the day I got it.
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August 26th, 2013 8:01am

Did you managed to fix this issue yet? I am also about to upgrade to Win8Pro64bit but not sure if my domain settings will be transferred across properly. There seems to be not much documentation on upgrading a network computer to win8.

August 27th, 2013 2:51pm

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