A friend showed me today how to conveniently logon to a local or remote machine as its local user, even if it’s in a domain. The trick is to prefix the username (local to the remote machine) with a “.\”, which (obviously) means “local domain”.

So, to logon to a remote machine via RDP as the machine’s local Administrator, enter this in the user prompt:

.\Administrator

The following screenshot is taken on a machine joined to a domain. Notice how “.\” is interpreted as a local domain, just below the password box. Observe:

The best thing is you can also use this for entering any remote user’s credentials on your own machine. There’s a catch: when you’re presented with a credentials prompt on your machine and enter the remote username prefixed with “.\”, Windows shows the name of your local machine below the password box. When you actually use the credentials to login to the remote machine, it interpets “.\” as its own “local domain”, and you’re logged in successfully. So don’t let your OS fool you :)

I’ve said quite a few bad words while trying to find out what a domain machine’s (often cryptic) name is to logon as a local Administrator. It’s probably a basic technique taught for MCSA and suchlike, but neat nevertheless, isn’t it?