HowTo: Add yourself as a local administrator via DirectAccess only connected PC

 Friday, March 18, 2016
Problem
You've just been offline domain joined to your domain and you login with your account only to discover that you're a non-administrator on your laptop! This won't do, so you hop launch Computer Management using a local administrator account or Microsoft Account that's an administrator and try to add your Active Directory ID. You soon discover that though Computer Management thinks it can see the domain, it can't seem to find the account that you're actually logged into the computer with!
Why It Doesn't Work
Honestly, I'm not sure on this one. My hypothesis is that Computer Management launched as a local admin is not able to use the DA tunnel, but it knows you're in a domain and expects that it can get to it. This is backed up by the long (Not Responding) message as you wait for it to fail. Bummer.
The Fix
Use a tool that is so old that it can't possibly fail! Kidding. But it is old. Remember the "net" command?
Launch a Command Prompt (cmd.exe) as a local administrator (or Microsoft Account with Local Administrator access).
Type in:
net localgroup administrators YOURDOMAIN\youraccount /ADD

I believe you're going to have to use your SamAccountName (old style DOMAIN\account) rather than UPN (account@ActiveDirectoryDomain.int), but the latter may work. I didn't try it so I simply don't know. :)

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