I had to set up a new Vista Home PC and join a domain, without realizing that I could not do so. Well, I first tried enabling ‘Ctrl+Alt+Del’ key combination for login. To do so:

Run : netplwiz

Under ‘Advanced’ tab, mark the checkbox ‘Require users to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete’. It did appear but it never requested me to provide username and password at the logon. So, I enabled it under Registry Editor.

Run : regedit

Under ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System‘, ‘dontdisplayusername‘ value was changed to 1 (which means ‘true’). Now, I can provide username and password. So, I entered ‘<domainname>\<username>‘ and ‘<password>‘. But, I later realized that I had not mentioned this PC as part of the domain.

So, I right-clicked on ‘My Computer‘ and just right to ‘Computer name‘, I clicked ‘Change settings‘. Again, I clicked ‘Change‘ button again to join a domain. Eek! I saw the following message on that dialog box.