So I took a laptop home from work tonight to do some tests and I forgot that I haven’t logged in to that laptop with my domain account for quite some time now so I of course got the message “Domain YOURDOMAIN is not available” and I couldn’t log in.

I connect to our network over a VPN connection using Cisco VPN Client but I first have to be logged in to Windows to do this. I want to be able to log in with my domain account directly then log in to the VPN as it is more convenient so here’s what I did to update the local cache for my domain profile:

1. Log in as local Administrator.
2. Log in to the VPN.
3. While still connected to the VPN, do a “Run As” on a program. In my case, I did a “Run As” with Outlook (press shift+right mouse click on the program’s icon, choose the option “Run As…” -> “The following user:” myDomain\username -> enter your current domain password) and the program should open using the profile of the user you wanted to run as.
4. Log off (which will also disconnect the VPN connection).
5. Log back in to your domain account using your current domain password and it should take it.

If you’re already able to log in with the cached password, but your current domain password is different from the cached password, while connected to the VPN you can just press CTRL+ALT+DEL, choose the option “Lock Computer”, and then unlock it but this time using your current domain password and that should update the cached password.