How to Add New User to Join Corporate Domain in Windows 7

Here is how you can add a new user in windows 7 to join your corporate domain. Assuming you’ve just finish a clean install of your Windows 7 and there is a network present you need to join.

1. First you need to join the domain

2. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > System, click the “Advanced system settings” on the left hand side.

3. Go to “Computer Name” Tab

4. Click “Change”, now you should see your computer name and Member of …

5. Enable “Domain” and enter your corporate domain (ask your IT support if you don’t know this, usually you can find out yourself by going to “cmd” > type “ipconfig /all” find the entry called Primary DNS Suffix and this should be your domain name. however, it can be different, and different company has their own domain, make sure you ask your IT support of you are not sure about this)

6. After you’ve done this it will ask you the login user account and password for joining this domain. and restart it when you done

7. Now when you login make sure you login as your local machine by typing localcomputername\username since you’ve already joined the domain, at this point if you login as the domain user you will loss the administrator privilege and you will be unable to do anything. To fix this you need to login to your local machine and change your domain user’s permission.

8. When you login in to your local machine go to Control Panel > User Accounts > User Accounts Click “Manage User Accounts” now you can add/manage a new user and assign it to the domain that you’ve just joined

9. After you’ve done that, restart your computer again and this time login as the new user you’ve just created and you should be good to go.

Here is the catch:

It’s important that you user your localcomputername\username to login after restart. If you don’t do this you will stuck after you join the corporate network, since you are no longer an administrator account and everything you do it will ask you for the admin account and password which you don’t at this point. Hence you will lose the privilege to do pretty much anything. Login to your local machine enables you to manage the account that you’ve just joined the domain network and you will have the full privilege to assign to that account as administrator. Reboot the machine and you are done.