Had a power outage last night, still cleaning up from that. I have a file server that doesn't know it's part of the domain (getting the error: windows cannot connect to the domain either because the domain controller is down). I read that "resetting" the machine account the bring it back into the domain will do the trick.
Since this is the file server for the entire office, I would like to be sure that I won't bork the umpteen number of shares on this server.
Thanks!
Resetting the machine account won't remove your sharing information. This info is stored in the registry and not affected by dropping the machine from your domain and re-adding it. What you'll see once you break the connection to your domain is that any groups/users/computers etc. that you've given access to in the sharing section will become raw SIDS. Since you're not connected to a domain they can't be translated. Once you reconnect to the domain all of that information will display properly as it did before resetting the account.
The method of "resetting" the machine account from AD, and pulling the server out of the domain and putting it back in worked like a charm. All of the network shares were there, and all is well.