A local Vista computer started having intermittent login failures when a domain user tried to log in about a trust problem with the account database.

Since Vista disables the local administrator account even though it had a password. I used Nordahl’s ntpasswd linux boot cd to enable the local administrator account (if I hadn’t known the password I could have changed it as well). Of course the CD requires access to the syskey as the SAM is encrypted, but it always finds it automatically since nobody puts the syskey on floppy.

Then I logged in and removed the computer to the domain, changed it’s name, and rejoined it and things were fine.

Domain profiles were kept intact by the way.