How to Join Your Computer to a Domain

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Users in corporations or large organizations sometimes need to manually join their computer to a domain. This can be accomplished quickly by following the steps below.

Note  You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent you from completing this procedure.

  1. Logon as Administrator. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties. The System Properties dialog box is displayed.

  2. On the Computer Name tab, click Change. On the Computer Name Changes dialog box, select Domain and enter the name of the domain in the text box, as shown in Figure 1 below. In this example, the computer currently named hq-res-wrk-o1 is joined to the Reskit domain.

    Joining a computer to a domain

    Figure 1. Joining a computer to a domain.

  3. Provide user name and password credentials to show you have the appropriate permissions to join the desired domain.

  4. When the Welcome to the domain message appears, click OK. You will need to restart you computer for the change to take effect.