How to leave a domain and join a workgroup in Vista

This is another one of those non-Silverlight problems, but since it created such a massive time sink I thought I would blog about it.

The Problem: You want to leave a domain for whatever reason (in my case, I wasn't using the server for anything) and join a workgroup.

The Cause: The solution at first seems simple and easy - just right click on "My Computer", go to Advanced, go to the "Computer Name" tab, and click on the "Change" button to join the workgroup. But that is too easy.

While the above method will work, your current user will lose all of the settings, even those which do not involved the server or domain in any way.

The Solution: The domain profile must be migrated to the workstation before the workstation leaves the domain - (I will write another post about that). This does not happen automatically or easily.

I'm not sure if this is a legitimately difficult problem, but it did take me some time to research, so I thought I would preserve it for internet posterity. I do not count computer networking as my strong suit.