Don’t bother reading this unless you’re feeling system administrator-y today.
I needed to test a limited access account on a PC, but the domain wouldn’t allow local log-in, so I dropped off the domain. That’s about when I realized that I had no local administrator account active on the PC and no way back to my domain account. I did manage to find an administrator account I didn’t have the password to. This software saved my neck. It allowed me to remove the Windows password for the local administrator account and log in and get back on the domain.
Lessons learned:
- Before disconnecting from a domain, always have a local administrator account at the ready.
- Domain accounts are cached even if you are disconnected from the domain, so that you can still log in while offline…as long as your machine is joined to the domain.
- As safe as you you think your Windows machine is with a password, that password can be removed. Encrypting your files would probably keep things safer.