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When a virtual workstation was last logged on?

Hi

How can I find out when a virtual workstation was last used / logged onto ?
...preferably not trawling though event logs.

I want to confirm all the virtual pc's in our fleet are being regularly used, preferably a script that reads a text file - vb or powershell would be good.

Thanks.

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andoss

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Psy053

That method is probably fine for a small network, however, I would hesitate using it if you have a large or geographically disperse environment, just purely because it will generate a whole heap of extra information that will replicated between your DC's.

I would suggest that you use a simple logon script that records the username, date and time to a log file on the computer or to a central repository.

For example:

echo %USERNAME% %DATE% %TIME% >> \\SERVER\SHARE\CompLogs\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt

or

echo %USERNAME% %DATE% %TIME% >> C:\Logs\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt

andoss

Maybe in an extremely large domain the amount of traffic replicated would be signficant
We have 1500 odd users in 7 different states and there was no noticeable increase in replication traffic after implementing this script.

I find the advantage to doing it this way is all the information is visible in AD next to all the other information instead of having to go searching through a txt file. You can visually see if a user hasn't logged on and delete them without having to go back and forth from a log file to AD Users & Computers.

The only real drawback is if you already use the Decription field for something else.