Record User Logon/Logoff Activity in AD

What operating system specifically are your clients using ?

If win7 or greater:

Parse for the following event IDs
4800 The workstation was locked.
4801 The workstation was unlocked.

If auditing is not enabled you will not see the above entries so verify login event auditing is enabled as shown below.
 
secpol.msc  local policies - audit policy - you can select the events you want to audit there.

Audit Other Logon/Logoff Events

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd772658(WS.10).aspx

I am using Windows XP and Windows 7.

Would you have the exact syntax for the command?

Thanks.

There is no direct way to check the same if auditing is enabled you can check the DC event log to track the same.

Instead of checking the eventvwr with too much info to look through you can use a simple logon/logoff script which outputs logon info to a text file.

How to track users logon/logoff
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/556015

If the account is getting locked then On th DC check the security log event id 644(Win2003) or 4740(Win2k8) will occur if the account is getting locked.Open the event and check the caller Machine.If you check the multiple 644 logs you will find the same caller machine.If this is the case unplug the caller machine from the network and do windows patching on the PC and update the virus defination and do full scan.There could be multiple PC in the environment which may be affected by Conficker virus.


Note:If the event id 644 has not occured then this mean that in audit policy user account management policy is not configured.Configure the same and check if the events are occuring.This scenario is for only Conficker Virus as I have faced the same issue in my network.

There may be many other causes for account locked out.
•user's account in stored user name and passwords
•user's account tied to persistent mapped drive
•user's account as a service account
•user's account used as an IIS application pool identity
•user's account tied to a scheduled task
•un-suspending a virtual machine after a user's pw as changed
•A SMARTPHONE!!!

For more refer KB article:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773155(WS.10).aspx


Troubleshooting account lockout the Microsoft PSS way:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/instan/archive/2009/09/01/troubleshooting-account-lockout-the-pss-way.aspx

Paul Bergson's User Account Lockout Troubleshooting
http://www.pbbergs.com/windows/articles/UserAccountLockoutTroubleshooting.html

Download the accountlockout tools and management pack to help resolve the issue.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7AF2E69C-91F3-4E63-8629-B999ADDE0B9E&displaylang=en

Auditing failed logon events and account lockouts
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc671957(WS.10).aspx


You can also set the debug flag on NetLogon to track authentication.  "This creates a text file on the PDC that can be examined to determine which clients are generating the bad password attempts."
Enabling debug logging for the Net Logon service
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/109626

Using the checked Netlogon.dll to track account lockouts
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189541

Has anybody used Microsoft Log Parse 2.2 for this?

 I am trying to see why it would not work against domain controller\Security option, where I can run the same (or similar) query against domain controller\System?

Thanks

Ok so here is an example and a link to help you better understand.
logparser "select EventID, TimeWritten, Message from security where
   (EventID  = 675 and EXTRACT_TOKEN(Strings,4,'|')='0x18') or
   (EventID = 681 and EXTRACT_TOKEN(Strings,3,'|')='0xC000006A')
   order by EventID, TimeWritten"

you can simply run this against the DC.

Here is an old article on using it:
http://windowsitpro.com/systems-management/access-denied-using-log-parser-audit-domain-logons

A primer on logparser:
http://www.orcsweb.com/blog/desiree/how-to-use-log-parser-to-query-event-log-data/


A good third party solution:
http://www.intersectalliance.com/projects/SnareWindows/index.html

Again, I am getting "WARNING: Input format not specified - using TEXTLINE input format.
Error: WHERE clause: Syntax Error: unknown field 'eventid' with Security events

However, when I run the same against System events it works....

It might be a matter of syntax, here is a very clear example:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692659.aspx

The ones on the left are pre-win7 / vista (e.g XP)
Here is a list of the event IDs
512 / 4608  STARTUP
513 / 4609  SHUTDOWN
528 / 4624  LOGON
538 / 4634  LOGOFF
551 / 4647  BEGIN_LOGOFF
N/A / 4778  SESSION_RECONNECTED
N/A / 4779  SESSION_DISCONNECTED
N/A / 4800  WORKSTATION_LOCKED
* / 4801    WORKSTATION_UNLOCKED
N/A / 4802  SCREENSAVER_INVOKED
N/A / 4803  SCREENSAVER_DISMISSED

Again, it works if I type this command:
logparser -o:csv "select * into c:\temp\my
test.csv from \\DC1\system where eventid='XXX'"

However, when
logparser -o:csv "select * into c:\temp\my
test.csv from \\DC1\security where eventid='YYY'"

And the events XXX and YYY events are in the event logs

I am a member of Domain Admin group.

If you are running this as administrator and still having issues I'm not sure what might be the issue here.

I would try right clicking the window and run as administrator and see if we get the same error.

By default, an ordinary user does not have permission to read the security log
(This seems to be an issue of permissions since it works for system logs)

This isshue is still not resolved

Can you tell me if this works for you:

You have to run from a powershell window.

 Get-WinEvent -LogName security -computername  servename

If that does I can whip something together so you can query for the events that track logon and logoff.

I guess this was the problem, even though I am a member of Domain Admins group.