Connecting Work Group machines into Domain

In case if you have a machine that is in the Workgroup and if you wanna join it to a domain, please follow the below steps.

First Go to My Computer->Properties to identify whether the machine is in a Workgroup or in a Domain.

Now click on Change Button. This will take you to a screen where you can change the Machine Name and also the Domain name. But remember if you want to change the machine name, please do it before connecting the machine to domain. It is not preferable to change the machine name once the machine is connected to the domain.

Now type in the Domain Name and click on OK Button. If the machine, is able to talk to Domain DNS, it pops up the credentials dialog box. In case if the machine is not able to talk to the Domain DNS, it gives an error message stating that there is a DNS problem.

In case if you see a DNS problem, then first thing to check is the TCP/IP settings on the Workgroup machine. In the TCP/IP entries, see that the Preferred DNS is pointing to the DNS Server that sits on the Domain. Suppose that the domain is with an IP : 10.10.10.10 and if the DNS server is also on the same machine,then on the Workgroup machine, you need to mention the Preferred DNS as 10.10.10.10 for the Workgroup machine to talk to DNS. May be it should look something like this :

Now that you have seen how to specify the DNS address, once you are all set, click on Ok button on the domain change screen. Here it will ask for domain credentials. You have to provide, domain admin and password. Once done, click on OK.

If the credentials provided are correct, then it will give you a welcome dialog box. Click on Ok and it will ask for a system restart.

Click on OK and the restart dialog pops up.

Clicking OK will take you the System Properties dialog. Click OK here to restart the machine.

Click on OK and when the following dialog shows up, click OK for the machine to restart.

When restarted, log into the machine the credentials as DomainName\DomainUser with password.

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