Divorcing from Windows Domain

February 21, 2010 6:47 AM

Windows 7 AD/Domain account -> regular account? How can I accomplish this?

I have a domain account on my local Windows 7 machine. I am no longer connected to the domain, nor will I ever be able to connect to it again. I'd like to keep this account as my normal account (which works fine right) but I'd like to stop having to type a local admin username/password everytime I do anything on my computer!

Is there anyway to 'convert' this account to a local account, or will I just have to bite the bullet and copy files and settings over to a local account?

posted by wrok to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Best answer: Take a look at Windows Easy Transfer. You can backup the domain account to an Easy Transfer backup, then restore it to the local account. In Easy Transfer's parlance the domain account is the "old" computer and the local account the "new" computer. When you choose to restore the domain account Easy Transfer will ask you if you want to create a new account or select an existing one to migrate the data to. If you select an existing local account any settings already in the local account will be overwritten.

Easy Transfer will migrate all your settings, favourites, shortcuts etc to the local account. You can have it migrate all or selected documents from your Documents folder and elsewhere. Make sure when you run the initial backup stage that you only select the domain account otherwise the backup file will contain every user on the system.

You'll want to ensure the local account is in the local Administrators group. Once you've migrated the accounts across, you can remove the system from the domain. If you have an external hard drive for the transfer file it'll go much faster.

I have used this going the other way - local to domain account - often.
posted by hjd at 8:11 AM on February 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks hjd, that worked perfectly.
posted by wrok at 3:05 PM on February 21, 2010