and then log into your local domain.

when you logged onto their network. They have scripts that can reconfigure your Windows configuration and remove the local machine entry.

Can you try "Safe Mode"? Hit F8 when it says "Windows XP....". Maybe you can try to recreate the local account? Log into Safe Mode, click on Control Panel, open up the System icon. Click on "Computer Name" and then hit "Change". Does it show your Workgroup or Domain name there? If Domain, don't change anything or else an administrator will have to add your system back into it when you get back in. If it is a workgroup, you can change the workgroup to something else. If you change from domain to workgroup, it will erase the domain, and you do not want that. I suspect you have Domains configured. If so, then you don't have XP Home, as it does not support domains.

Workgroup and Domains joining are expained here:
[link|http://www.lpt.com/windowsnetworking/regusers/wxpjoind.htm|http://www.lpt.com/w...sers/wxpjoind.htm]

While in Safe Mode, see what you can modify in the Administration tools:
Open up the Local Security Policy from the Administrative Tools in the Control Panel. Under Local Policies, User Rights Assignment check that the Log on locally item contains the following groups:

Administrators
Guest
Power Users
Users

Chances are they removed all of these groups so nobody can log into the machine locally, and only from a network account.

I am unable to locate where the local computer account is stored that can be switched off and on.

In safe mode do this:

Click on Star Menu, choose Run, type this in:
control userpasswords2

Hit Enter.

Do you see any user names for the computer? If not, they wiped them all out. Some BOFH zapped them. Click ADD to add in the Administrator account, etc.

One way to trick it is to set up an NT 4.0 Server or Windows 2000 Server, or Linux server with a SAMBA server using the same Domain name as your work uses, but at home. Do you have a second machine to log into?

then disconnect the network cable, power off and reboot. Log in and then see if you can use the USB drive. IIRC policies are loaded from the network, at least it used to work that way with Windows 9X. I also remember that removing the group policies application would also get the same thing. I think W2K and XP have this built in now.

If it is your laptop, run a software firewall program and then block access to the part of Windows that handles group policies. If it cannot load the policies from the server, it cannot apply them.

Anyway if you use Wireless, disable the Wireless connection, or unplug the cable for the wire connection. Then reboot the computer and change the policies yourself if they are sticking:

For XP Pro:
[link|http://www.theeldergeek.com/group_policy_editor.htm|http://www.theelderg...policy_editor.htm]

For Windows 2000 you can edit the policies to what you want and then do this:
[link|http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/gp/228.asp|http://msdn.microsof.../en-us/gp/228.asp]

It will disable ADM updates, so they cannot change it back.

Apparently you may have to modify your Active Directory entries and hope that they do not change back when you log back onto their network.

Just log on with an administrative account, not to their domain, but your local computer name. You won't be on their network, but you can modify whatever you want on your laptop and access your USB flash drive.

Personally I usually start network shares at N, O, or P, myself. Unless it is Netware which uses Z, Y, X, L, etc. If Netware never will be used, I assign CD/DVD, Zip drives, etc to Z, Y, X, if it is used I assign them to Q, R, S or whatever network drives are not being used.

Only Newbies, Nitwits, PHBs, and Brain-Dead System Administators assign network drives to D, E, F. Like the last few places I worked at did that. Then when that 6G drive was used with NT 4.0, they only used 2G of it for C, and left 4G unused because it would conflict with network drives. NT 4.0 would not allow them to format all of the drive due to a BIOS limitation and had limited it to 2G chunks. The CD-ROM was moved to Z, after programs were installed, which resulted in funny errors when the apps tried to look for the source CD. How these people got Microsoft Certification is beyond me, must have gotten the test answers off of the Internet?

Oh yeah at the law firm, a login script would clear out the Outlook configuration, and a partner that tried to use a Datalink watch and PDA to synch with Outlook kept finding his settings were missing after every reboot. They refused to do anything about it because they do not support those devices at the time. So instead I took the part of the registry that saved the settings and made a REG file, and had him click on that file before he did the synching. It was a work-a-round for boneheaded management.