unlocking inherited domain policies in windows xp?

I have a laptop that is being decomissioned to be sold to the public. I am trying to build an image from this laptop in order to apply it to the other dozens of laptops we have going out. I figured rather than spend the time to reinstall windows and other software that is going with it I would just take what i have and essentially trim the fat. I have uninstalled all the necessary software that I needed, deleted profiles, etc.

However, this laptop was a member of a domain and it inherited some domain policies that also seemed to lock themselves. for example, I want to change the default password coplexity, expiration length, and overall length.

I have removed this machine from the domain so i figured that the policies would not affect the local machine profile but I am still not able to change them, is there a way to override these policies?

this is windows xp, and the policies are located: Local computer policy | Security Settings | Account Policies, Local Policies

My advice is to thoroughly wipe the harddrives and make an image of a fresh install for the other laptops. Data is easily recovered and I am sure your company does not want a lot of that data being released to anyone who wants to look for it. Good luck

definitely agree that it would be worth the time to completely remove the data from the drives. Also, a good clean image as well.

I realize and will restart from scratch but this has sparked my curiosity and I wanted to know how to do this before i blow it away.

If there's anything on the drives likely to be worth $1000, zero fill the drives 3 times, if there's anything likely to be worth $10,000 do it 5 times, if there's anything worth $100,000 do it 17 times and if there's anything worth $1M or over, take the drives out and steamroller them.

I believe you have to be an admin on the local machine to remove any local policies

I think the cleanest way for it to work is for you to lift the policy restrictions off the machienes while they are still on the domain, and then remove them from the domain and you shouldn't have any problems.

Even easier is to just wipe and reload.