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Logging Win2K Pro into multiple domains

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by maestrog

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We had a consultant in the office who needed to access resources in our NT 4 domain. He was using a laptop with Windows 2000 Professional. I was about to change the domain his computer was a member of (to ours), when he said he didn't want to remove his company's domain. I suspect he didn't want to have to have his tech support guys put him back on their domain when he returned to his office ;-).

Anyway, is there a way to be a member of more than one domain in Win2000 Pro? If I could've joined him to our domain temporarily without removing him from his company domain, he would have let me do it. I ended up using WinZip and spanned 8 floppies to get the info he needed from our server to his computer.

It seems like it might be possible since you get a domain list in the logon box, (couldn't you have more than one domain in that list?).

Thanks for your help.

4 replies

by mdavis

The only way to get multiple domains in the dropdown list is to have trust relationships created between your NT domains. You might try logging on to the Win2k machine as a local account, then mapping a network drive to the shared folder on your network. Your server won't recognize the local account, but the Win2k machine should bring up a "connect as" window. At that point you would type in a username and password from the NT domain. As long as that user has permission to the shared resource, it should connect you up.

by umbral-echo

If you have an identical account on both machines (User and password) you should be able to access the domain normally without any dialog boxes popping up.

This little phenomena often occurs in test labs we work in because the administrator account has the same password on all the machines. If he has access to the local administrator account on a professional machine you should be able to right-click the "My Computer" icon and choose manage to call up the Computer Management utility. You cancreate the user account in the "Local Users and Groups" section of the utility and add it to the administrators local group if he needs elevated priveleges. If an account with the same name and password exists on your domain you should gain access to resources normally as if he logged on.

Failing that you can always create a folder on your company's domain and share it to the "Everyone" group long enough to copy the data out of it.

by jrubinstein

Whilst both the previous answers are correct, it is also possible to create another local area network connection which will have a different domain listed as it's membership suffix.

by maestrog

These are all excellent answers! I thought I should be able to "connect as", but just wasn't sure how to get it to prompt me. And, having an identical account (in his local users group) to a domain user account in my domain hadn't occured to me, but it sounds doable and easier than the first suggestion. Lastly, I thought I could add another LAN connection, but wasn't sure if I should experiment on his machine. Have you done this, jrubinstein? Any quirks to know about?

I'm not sure whoto give the ansers to, but I will re-evaluate my question and situation and make a decision.

Thanks everyone!

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