Networks Dual networking

My dad has a company laptop. At his work he logs onto a network domain. When he comes home he wants to be able to print off a printer on the home network. But because he's got domain settings rigged up (and can't easily switch between 'workgroup' and 'domain' because of lack of admin powers) he can't join the home network. He can access the web but cant file or print share. Is there a solution?

 

Other than getting another machine or constantly adjusting the settings, not really.

 

You can get a printserver for the printer, it will give the printer an ip and you can then use that to add the printer.

 

does he not have a local admin account on the laptop?

 

I dont think that will work because it can't even ping the other computers... if it could connect to an IP address then I could just connect it to one of the computers and print share through it.

 

I'm not quite sure what admin rights he's allowed to access, but definitely not the domain/workgroup switching page...

 

Well, I suppose you could clone the domain server at home, although all the settings will have to be near exact including the IP address or servername it can be done.

 

Did they take out the local domain logon too? (they should if it's a decent IT dept. )
Otherwise get yourself a pw reset boot cd and reset the local admin account and use that account at home. Or add a new account and sync that with the home network PC's.
But remember there's a reason why he's not allowed to do such things, we from IT dept. hate it when users mess with their laptops....aside from the security breaching risks.

 

I'll blame microsoft for not having a easy and secure way for people to plug machines into other networks and see the public printers and network shares on that network.

 

Have you tried start>run>ipconfig, just to see if it's in the same iprange as the home network? You may be able to open one of the subnet mask octets a little to allow access, but if it's a wildly different ip address, there's very little chance (i.e. if your home network is 192.168.1.x and your dad's is 192.168.2.x, you could change the subnet mask on the router's settings to 255.255.0.0 and see if it allows access, but if your dad's is something like 10.x.x.x I would suggest against opening all the subnet masks up).

 

yeh we're on a 10.x.x.x network. It has an address as dished out by the router, so we're all on the same subnet and ip range. They just wont talk....