I'm clearly having a Google search brain fart here, because I can't find any info on this.

When moving a computer from a domain environment to a workgroup, how do I convert a user's profile to something local to the computer? I'd like to keep all the user's files and settings intact, if possible.

This is in Windows XP and 7.

Wow, that's an exceptionally good question. I have absolutely no idea, and though I have no need of such a thing right now, I'm terribly curious what the answer is.

Thanks Tony!

Yeah, I'm not sure what happens or what I should do. Does it depend on how things were set up for the domain?

There is a "Copy To..." button in SYSDM.CPL. Maybe that's all you need to do?

Hmm, I'm not familiar with that...

My recollection with copying user profiles was that you'll need to know the folder name. For instance, when I had a user profile for the local computer ("workgroup"), the folder name was C:\users\tonyf. Then I joined a domain and then signed in as a user on the doman whose name was the same as the local computer (domain user: domain\tonyf), then the folder name became C:\users\tonyf.DOMAIN. However the names might be different if you do it the other way round. For instance if I started out on the domain, the user profile folder would have still been C:\users\tonyf without the domain tacked on, and if I later switched to workgroup, there would have been another thing tacked on (perhaps the name of the local computer? Don't remember).

What I'd try is this:
- Create a local user account before even unjoining the computer.
- See if SYSDM.CPL lets you copy the Domain user profile on top of that local user account (you have to know the folder names correctly).
- See if you can sign in as that local user before you bother to unjoin the domain.
- See if the user account seems to work as-is and see if it seems to have correctly gotten the settings from the domain user. (it might not automatically sign you into domain resources but it should prompt you for creds at least).
- Then see if unjoining from the domain works, then see if that local user still works.

If that works, then my first post in this thread was a total lie, I actually did know how to do it.

Haha, thanks Tony, I agree with your thought process, for sure. I'll figure out how I'll go about this. Thanks for your help!

OK, sorry for dragging up an old post, but I though it would be good to follow up.

Turns out: this is not really something MS wants you to be able to do.

Tony, I tried your suggestion, but didn't even have the option. I got into the profile settings and the "Copy to:" button was grayed out.

I found several sites that describe steps for how to convert a domain profile to a local profile, but at best they all describe very wonky ways to do it. Most of the time, it involves just giving permissions to every file in the Domain User Account folder to a Local User Account, granting the same to everything under the HKCU, and then spoofing the user profile address in the SID in the ProfileList key.

On one computer, this process actually eventually worked! But on another, it really didn't. I got to the very end and everything looked fine, but for some reason the now-local profile had tons of missing rights. It was so bad, that nothing would load in the control panel, I couldn't bring up the network and sharing dialog, the network adapter didn't know how to connect to the network, etc. Some programs opened, but Outlook couldn't find the profile that was already there.

Anyway, in the end I'm going to cross my fingers and merely remove the server from the network. All the users will still be able to access their accounts, and their passwords will still get them in. When a user leaves, I'll simply remove their computer from the domain and set them up with a local account.

Yup, I should have this project done in 5-10 years...