Marty1781

ok, so nix #3 on my list, I found the option to make it a local machine again (my computer - properties - computer name - change - then make it part of "workgroup") but once I do that, seems I don't have the necessary permissions to "remove it from the network". any help with the other issues is still greatly appreciated though! thanks in advance! p.s. it really bugs me that he removed my Norton Firewall and didn't even put a replacement firewall from McAfee (only AV). He says the "network" has an adequate firewall and I don't need my own. Ya, well how about when I travel with my laptop, there is no network to protect me then. Just really irritates me that they think they know better. I guess there is always the crappy builtin Windows Firewall. *Rant off*

Hello all, I have been having a horrible time trying to undo what must seem like a thousand regedits my IT department did to my laptop. Because of a couple idiots who lost their federal goverment laptops, everyone in the US Department of Health and Human Services required to have their laptops encrypted. Of course, this is extreme overkill, especially for someone like me who has absolutely no sensitive data on my laptop (I'm a biomedical researcher so its nothing but a bunch of science notes that I couldn't pay someone to read). Anyways, when they took my laptop to encrypt it (and now I can no longer make backup images of my scientific data, way to go guys), the IT dept took the liberty of making several other changes to my previously finely tuned laptop. He removed my Symantec Antivirus and Firewall software because he said it was "unsecure" and replaced it with McAfee Viruscan 8.x and going into that program, a lot of the options have been greyed out (any way to ungray them?). They also made a couple of regedits and while I have been able to undo some of them (disable "Automatic Updates", disable required password screen saver after 15 minutes), I haven't had the same luck with some of the others. 1. Specifically, the option for "change the way security center alerts me" is greyed out, I would like to re-enable that. 2. I had a local admin account on the machine but it seems to have been disabled. I can still see the username folder if I go to C:\Documents and Settings but if I go to the "User Accounts" in control panel, it is not listed. Only my network logon is there (whcih has admin rights) as well as what looks to be a local "Administor" account that I assume the IT guy created but my previous local admin account is gone. Is there any way to re-enable my local account? 3. I remember there was an option in XP where you could change a PC from being "local" (and thus using the Windows welcome screen) to making it be on a network thus making you do the ctrl-alt-del and then logging on to a domain. I cannnot seem to remember right now where that option is, I've looked everywhere, maybe the IT guy hid thtat as well? Anyways, the IT guy changed it from the former to the latter and its driving me insane, my speedy machine is significantly slower and I can't stand it. If someone could please explain the process to make my machine a "local" machine once again (and then I can just switch it back if I ever need to give it to the IT guys again), it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help you can provide in getting my computer back to its speedy self again!