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Global method for seeing current logins?

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by gralfus

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Is there a way to tell if a particular login is being used currently? I'm trying to see if I left another computer logged in with my account, but I don't know the name or location of the computer. I have domain admin rights, but am not sure of which tool to use.

10 replies

by Former member

See if you can do a "net send" to your login name while logged in as another user. Net send will go to ip address, username, pc name or entire domain if your DNS is all set up correctly. Or you could get some network scanner s/w (such as gfi's one) which will tell you which login is currently active on a pc.

by gralfus

Thanks, but I don't think our admins would appreciate me running a scanner on our network, especially one from a untested source. It might work, but I might also be introducing back doors, etc. My job is more important than getting this question answered.

by shmaltz

Dean gives the right answer, however it should be noted that it is not DNS that is responsible for this but NETBIOS is. If you have WINS running look for the value [03h] which is the username. If you don't have WINS running, then you can check using the ipaddress but this might take too long. If NETBIOS over TCP/IP is disabled then the only way is by enabling Auditing on the Domain Controllers, and having a program extract the logons and logoffs and matching them against each other to be able to give you an answer about logged in users. I'm sure that you can buy such a program I just don't know who makes it.

by gralfus

Would you tell me the correct syntax to use to send a message to a username? I am hesitant because I don't want to accidently send a popup to all the users. Is it "NET SEND /USERS gralfus" or a different syntax?

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