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How to create "subdomain" in an Win2kpro

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by rhiegen

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Dear Friends,

I have a NT 4.0 sp6 PDC and Win 2k pro desktops. Some groups of these desktops are situated in certain envirorments I would like to be kind of a subnet, as I had when the desktops were Win98. However in the Windows 2000 pro if I putthe desktop member of a group I cannot log as a network or domain user. How do I create the equivalent "subnet" I had when the desktops were Win 98 now using Win2k pro in a single domain network.

Thanks
]
Paulo

3 replies

by timwalsh

The short answer is : you can't (not in your current environment).

With Windows 98, because the computer is not realy joined to the network (in the same context as WinNT or Win2K), no computer account is created. Thus in one setting can specifya Workgroup name, and another setting can specify a domain to log-on to.

This possibility does not exist with WinNT Workstation and later OSes. Starting with WinNT, the process of joining a computer to a domain actually created a computer account with its attendant security identifier. A computer with one of these OSes cannot belong to both a domain and a workgroup.

You might consider upgrading to Win2K. Win2K and Active Directory (AD) introduce the concept of Organizational Units (OUs). The would give you the same functionality of segregating different groups of computers while still be joined to the domain. You also get the added functionality of being able to impose different security policies for each OU if necessary.

Only you can determine if the benefit of being able to segregate computers into different groups outweighs the added cost of a domain migration and the additional administrative overhead imposed by AD.

Hope this helps.

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