The problem

You use a laptop at work, and there it has to be in a domain. You also want to use the laptop at home, where you only have a workgroup setting.

Solution 1 – Use the laptop as is

General

The preferable option is usually to leave the laptop's configuration alone as much as possible, so you don't cause any problems when the laptop goes back to the domain.

Fortunately, you can log on to the domain even if you're not connected to the domain controller, through the cached domain profile, and that's what you can do at home or in a similar workgroup setting.

If logging on at home takes inordinately long, the cause can be logon scripts that time out when you're not in the domain environment. There may be ways to tune these scripts or the setup to avoid that.

You can also log on to a local account on the computer, which leaves the domain settings untouched, but gives you a different profile. To do this, expand the options at the login screen, click the arrow next to the domain name and select your computer name (this computer). There are even ways to copy the domain profile to a local profile, so you keep the settings, but this is beyond the scope of this article.

IP address

First, however, you have to make sure that the computer gets a usable IP address.

If the IP address is set to automatic, then you have no problem. This should work at work just as well as at home, provided you have a DHCP server. A DHCP server is usually part of a broadband router, and it is also part of the Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS).

If your computer is set up with a fixed IP address at work, copy the IP settings to a piece of paper, then set the IP address settings to automatic, then enter the fixed settings into the alternative configuration. This often works, but test it at work first. If it doesn't work, you may have to use a tool like NetSwitcher (see the link near the end of this page).

Access to shares and printers

Once you have Internet connectivity, you can use workgroup shares and printers by logging on to them individually, using the username and password of a user of the target computer or through the Guest account if shares and printers permit Guest access.

To make things more convenient, you can name your home workgroup the same as the NetBIOS name of the office domain, if you like. For example, if the office domain is named xyz.com, name the workgroup xyz. You have to make this change on all computers in your workgroup though, if you want to keep them all in one and the same workgroup.

You can even automate that by writing a batch file that uses the NET USE command to establish the connections.

To check or change the domain setting, right-click on My Computer, then click on Computer name, Change.

Solution 2 – Reconfigure

Follow the advice in this article:

Using a Portable Computer from Work on Your Home Network
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/learnmore/domainjoined.mspx

Closing remarks

A third party product that can help with more complicated situations is NetSwitcher.

I'm grateful for an email if you find any errors or omissions or if you have any proposals for improvement.