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Are computernames still in use.

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7 replies

by /l

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I have a user base of 500 users approx but assigned computernames are up to 800. I reckon there are free PC names available to use since a lot of people have upgraded PCs, gotten laptops ect. Is there any way of finding out if these PCs are still active? Tried pinging computer names but there are too many to do individually and I would like to automate the process and record the information over a 4 week basis, there is a Wins and DHCP server onsite.
Any ideas gratefully received.

7 replies

by mackem

You haven't stated how many servers, or what operating systems you are using. If you are using NT 4.0 servers you could try Net Watch although with this many users it would still be a difficult job. You could also look in server manager/Users. This will give you a list of all users and computer names using each server.
Best of luck.

by jason.barnett

If you utilise login scripts here is how I would do it...

In the master login script add the following:

echo %computername% >>\\server_name\share_name\atextfile.txt

When the user logs on this command will append the computername to a text file on your network (make sure that all users have change access to this file).

After a suitable period where you can be sure that all users will have logged on, you will have a file containing all computer names in use.

An alternative is to dothis:

echo %computername% >\\server_name\share_name\%computername%.txt

This will produce a unique text file for each computer that is logged on to in a share of your choosing.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

JB.

by russ werner

Go to http://languard.com , then downloads. Languard Network Scanner...
LANguard network scanner is a freeware security scanner to audit your network security. It scans entire networks and provides NETBIOS information for each computer such as hostname, shares, logged on user name. It does OS detection, password strength testing, detects registry issues and more. Reports are outputted in HTML.
Does just what you want...

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