Checking who's on your network

[Quatermass]

What do you folks use to give you an overview of who's logged on where? I know this is a perennial problem and that the nature of Windows networks has always meant it's tricky or impossible to get a 100% accurate view, but nevertheless... when we were RM CC3 we had the dreaded Management Console, but we're vanilla MS now. Any useful tool to suggest? Don't mind if it's not free, but equally don't want a fully fledged quasi-RM system - we've already got tools for pretty much everything else.

[AngryTechnician]

There are a plethora of scripts and logging systems available for this in various threads on here. I use Lansweeper to record all of our logons, but it doesn't record logoff events, so is more of a record of who last logged on to a particular computer.

On the very rare occasions that I need to find out exactly who is logged on at that very moment, I just log on to the file server that stores everyone's redirected folders and have a look at the active sessions list.

[mdench]

We use fog for imaging our pcs which also logs who logs in where and you can search by username and see what pcs they logged into or choose the pc to see who logged in over the specifed time period.

[psydii]

We have this functionality through our helpdesk system, SysAid.

[levell3r]

Yeah, we have a script that creates a small text file with the name and machine of who's logged on, and if you try again it logs you out (im pretty sure it came from Edugeek)


you can use it to check who's logged on by looking at the share.



Logon script:

rem check for the logon file to exist
IF EXIST \\curricsvr2\logs$\logonchecker\%username%*.log \\curricsvr2\netlogon\scripts\vbmessage.cmd

rem create a log file of usage by username
echo %computername% >> \\curricsvr2\logs$\logonchecker\%username%-%computername%.log


VB Message
@call \\curricsvr2\netlogon\scripts\vb-logoff-popup.vbs

sleep 3
logoff.exe



VB-logoff-pop.vbs
Const TIMEOUT = 60
Const POPUP_TITLE = "Multiple Logins Detected"
Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
objShell.Popup "PLEASE READ This user account is logged on elsewhere. Please logout that machine before starting a new user session. Machine will logoff in 60 seconds.", _
TIMEOUT,POPUP_TITLE,vbExclamation+vbOKOnly+vbSyste mModal


Logoncheckclear
rem file check clear
del \\curricsvr2\logs$\logonchecker\%username%-%computername%.log

[JJonas]

we added this to all the logon.bat files

echo %date% %time% %computername% %username% >>\\myserver\logon$\logons.txt

[Norphy]

Userlock will give you a live view of who's logged onto your network

[speckytecky]

Mixture of Impero and the various Netstat commands

netstat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[sjatkn]

we added this to all the logon.bat files

echo %date% %time% %computername% %username% >>\\myserver\logon$\logons.txt

I did the same adding "logon" and then created a log off script which did the same but with "logoff" instead. That way I know how long a user has been using the machine. I must investigate to see if I can do the same with AD authenticated OS X machines.

[timbo343]

+1 for userlock here. Been using it since version 3 and its a piece of software that i would not like to live without, it is so useful

[chrisbunn]

Thank you for those mentioning UserLock. If anyone has any questions don't hesitate to contact me.