Rejoin a computer to a domain

Sometimes a workstation may be offline or off-network so long that some policy or other automation in-place on your network may cause the device to show up as a "stale" device and drop-off or be removed from the domain.

In these cases, you can do one of two things to get the device to become functional again:

  1. Reimage the Device
    1. You will need to backup any data first, otherwise it will be lost.
  2. Rejoin the device to the domain.
    1. In this case, you must know the password for a local account with administrator privileges.  If you do not, your only option is to re-image the device.

If you want to rejoin the device to the domain, you can follow the following steps:

  1. "Unjoin" the device locally so that it no longer thinks it's joined to the domain.
    1. Right click the start menu button and select "System"
      PCRejoin01
    2. Select "Advanced System Settings on the System > About screen (it may be in a different location than shown if you are on Windows 10)
      PCRejoin02
    3. In the System Properties window that opens up, navigate onto the "Computer Name" tab, and select the "Change" button next to "rename this computer or change its domain" option
      RejoinPC03
    4. Change the radio button selection from "Domain" to "Workgroup", and type and word value here (you can even just use "1234" or "Workgroup"), then click "OK"
      PCRejoin04
    5. Confirm the prompts that display for Computer Name/Domain changes, and also to reboot the computer when prompted
      PCRejoin05
  2. Join the computer back to the domain.
    1. When the computer reboots from the last step, log in with the local account that has administrative privileges.
    2. Right click the start menu button and select "System"
      PCRejoin01
    3. Select "Advanced System Settings on the System > About screen (it may be in a different location than shown if you are on Windows 10)
      PCRejoin02
    4. In the System Properties window that opens up, navigate onto the "Computer Name" tab, and select the "Change" button next to "rename this computer or change its domain" option
      RejoinPC03
    5. Change the radio button selection from "Workgroup" to "Domain", and type the fully qualified domain name of your active directory domain (IE: "example.company.com").  Click OK.
    6. Accept the prompts to reboot the computer.  Once it reboots, you should be able to log in with domain accounts again.