Cannot change change domain membership to workgroup

does anyone have an idea why an XP pro machine inc SP2 comes up with “Note: The identification of the computer cannot be changed because: – Networking is not installed or is not properly configured.

This machine can got on the internet, i can remote desktop into it, it can log onto a netware server etc… it cannot however contact a Domain Controller running on Windows 2003 Enterprise Server .

Any one got any ideas of how to resolve this, i would like to remove it from the domain and rejoin it but i cannot put it back into the work group?!
I do not have the administrator password for the machine by the way, i think however the user that was created before was set as a local machine admin