Local user account has disappeared!

[SunnyByfleet]

This is very odd. It has happened on three different laptops (50% of our total). All users are part of the office 2003 domain, and have a local profile with admin privileges.

Now, on the affected machine, if you go Control Panel->Users it says the only one present is the local administrator.

It is very odd. The profile is still there; they have the same icons etc and email, but they no longer have local admin privileges etc.

The problem happened recently, but has happened in the past as well. The problem arose after they connected to the network then powered up again afterwards when they were disconnected.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[bcastner]

The user has two logons: local, and Domain.
Because of cached credentials, the user is allowed a Domain logon even if the machine is disconnected from the network:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q172931

 

[SunnyByfleet]

I don't see what thats got to do with anything.

I have granted a domain user rights on the local computer, by adding it in Control Panel->Users

It listed the user, showed that it belongs to the work domain. I also assigned it local administrative permissions.

Everything worked fine. When the user was not connected to the network, the user still logged on with the domain account, and still had local admin rights.

Then all of a sudden they didn't. Their profile remained, at least, the icons etc. But when you look at Control Panel->Users their username is no longer there. They didn't remove it. This has happened three times to three different users. They haven't all deleted their accounts, something else has happened. I just don't know what. Any ideas?