Windows 7 has the built in 'Boot Performance Diagnostics' and judging by the numerous reboots i've done, it does generate every now and then a detailed log on the user's login process and possible slowness.
That is not good enough for what I'm after though.
I want to measure EVERY Boot on a given machine.
There is little information however available on how to force it, except fiddling with registry keys that are System Protected so you don't tamper with them.
Some of the information can be found in the eventlogs so i switched to tracing the eventid 12
$yesterday = (get-date) - (New-TimeSpan -day 2)
$startuplog= Get-WinEvent -FilterHashTable #{LogName='System'; ID=12;
StartTime=$yesterday} -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
But does anyone know how one can measure when the system was ready (ctrl-alt-del) and when the user hit the enter button after typing in the password? Is there a flag that can be set to raise such an event in a (diagnostics) event log?
You can compare the power state timestamp to the "Last Interactive Logon" feature of AD DS. That feature requires a domain functional level (DFF) of Windows Server 2008 r2 to work and workstation infrastructure of windows vista or later. The "msDS-LastSuccessfulInteractiveLogonTime" attribute is what you want. It's the time stamp of the last successful interactive logon (ctrl+alt+del).
To enable Last Interactive Logon on your domain:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd446680(v=ws.10).aspx
Command to query attribute:
$Computer = 'hostname'
Get-ADComputer -Filter "name -eq $Computer" -Properties * | Select msDS-LastSuccessfulInteractiveLogonTime
P.S. Try to get away from using "-ErrorAction". In it's place, use Try/Catch/Finally code blocks.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/03/11/hey-scripting-guy-march-11-2010.aspx
Related
I am trying to find a way to find out who has ran an application (for example SQL) on a server, just to get some idea.
I tried Get-Process but this doesn't give me historic information, I want to get historical information
Get-Process -IncludeUserName *
what I want the return resule is "name of application", "user who ran it" and the last datetime it was ran by that user'
As for ...
I am trying to find a way to find out who has ran an application (for
example SQL) on a server, just to get some idea.
What you are asking for here is software metering.
SQL is a service that is always running once it is installed, so, no individual user is ever going to be running it. So, that is a bad example. MS Word for example would be a better example.
Yet there is nothing native in PowerShell that does this, software metering, but of course PowerShell can look at event logs. Yet if your auditing is not setup correctly then it's moot. This is better for a software metering tool, and there are several out there. So, why try and reinvent the wheel.
As for ...
I tried Get-Process but this doesn't give me historic information, I
want to get historical information
That is not what a process is nor what Get-Process is for. It, Get-Process only checks for and lists whatever process is currently running, regardless of what/who launched it.
As for...
what I want the return resule is "name of application", "user who ran
it" and the last datetime it was ran by that user'
As long as the process is running, you can get this, with that cmdlet.
However, what are you trying to accomplish by this?
Again, there are purpose built tools to meter software use.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/apps/deploy-use/monitor-app-usage-with-software-metering
If you must go down this reinvent the wheel road, using scripting, then you need a task watcher on the target machines, which watches for the WinWord process to appear.
Get-Process -IncludeUserName |
Where ProcessName -EQ 'Winword'
... you then write those results to a file or database or your own event log each time you see that process.
Use PowerShell to Create and to Use a New Event Log
New-EventLog -LogName ScriptingGuys -Source scripts
When the command runs, no output appears to the Windows PowerShell console. To ensure the command actually created a new event log, I use
the Get-EventLog cmdlet with the –List parameter. Here is the command
and the associated output.
Write-EventLog -LogName ScriptingGuys -Source scripts -Message “Dude, it works … COOL!” -EventId 0 -EntryType information
Or just to a file
Get-Process -IncludeUserName |
Where ProcessName -EQ 'Winword' |
Select-Object -Property Name, StartTime, Username |
Export-Csv -Path 'F:\Temp\AppLaunchLog.csv' -Append
Import-Csv -Path 'F:\Temp\AppLaunchLog.csv'
# Results
Name StartTime UserName
---- --------- --------
WINWORD 5/23/2019 9:02:53 PM WS01\LabUser001
Problem
I am trying to schedule a job that monitors events on remote machines.
I wrote the script based on the Get-EventLog command and it works properly when run by my account. But when I run the Get-EventLog as SYSTEM user, the .Message attribute of the returned objects shows the following error:
The description for Event ID '4724' in Source 'Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing' cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display the message, or you may not have permission to access them. The following information is part of the event: {somedata}
When I use the Get-WinEvent command as SYSTEM user, the problem does not appear and the .Message part displays properly.
I would stick with Get-WinEvent, especially since the data is much easier to parse (thanks to the ToXML() method), but the Get-EventLog happens to be terribly faster :(
Question
Does anyone have any idea why the Get-EventLog fails to render .Message when run by SYSTEM user and perhaps how to fix it?
To avoid obvious answers:
the COMPUTER$ account is member of DOMAIN\Event Log Readers group,
the COMPUTER$ account does have the read privileges over the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Security on remote machines,
obviously, the registry entries for Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing and related DLL's are identical on both the source and target computers.
Try:
Get-WinEvent -LogName “Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing” | where ID -eq 4724 | select-object -ExpandProperty Message
We have recently acquired a small firm having 1500 servers on which our team doesn't has access as of now although they are in domain. We need to find out how many servers are running Windows 2k3 and how many are Windows 2k8.
I know the RDP screen of both of these versions are different , for example: if we RDP a Win2k3 machine, it gives a warning notice first and once we click Ok, it takes us to the credentials screen , but in case of Win2k8, it directly takes us to Crendentials which is a proof of the OS on the server. Doing this manually for 1500 servers is a time consuming task.
Can we implement this RDP screen logic using a script to find out the Windows OS version.
I can imagine an Algorithm something like that:
Enter server name.
Invoke mstsc for that server
Verify if the dialogue box is a direct prompt for credentials or not?
If so, print Windows 2k8, else 2k3/2k.
If this logic successful on one server, I can use it in a foreach loop for all servers and export in in Excel.
With 1500 servers I'm going to assume that you have an Active Directory in place. In that case you should be able to simply run a query against AD to retrieve the desired information:
Import-Module ActiveDirectory
$server = 'somehostname'
$dc = '...' # domain controller of trusted domain
$fltr = "OperatingSystem -like '*server*'"
Get-ADComputer -Filter $fltr -Property OperatingSystem -Server $dc |
Where-Object { $_.Enabled } |
Select-Object Name, OperatingSystem |
Sort-Object OperatingSystem, Name
Pipe the result into Export-Csv to create a CSV file that you can import into Excel.
I'm trying to come up with a powershell script thatcan determine the last number of users that logged on to a machine. I'm stuck on to how to approach it. If I'm correct, using a get-wmiobject call will only get the last user. I'm wondering if maybe there is a call I can do to get the history of something like the user folder and get the last users that modified that?Or is there some simpler way?
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverpowershell/thread/c61dc944-6c40-4ab8-93f8-8c345c37b0d4
Basically, all user logins are saved in the security log of each windows server. These are set in the log with the following eventIDs: 528 and 540. These two IDs are for a direct or a remote login to a machine. For my specific need, I have to following line in my script. If you have a similar need, be sure to read up on windows eventIDs on a site like this one
Get-EventLog -logname security -ComputerName $svr -Newest 100 | where {$_.eventID -eq 528
-or 540} | select time,user
enjoy!
Caveat: Without spiking the cpu while a Get-WmiObject call parses the whole event log to match my specified filter.
Situation: I am working on a script that remotely runs some checks, then reboots a pc. I want it to check the health once the server reboots (after sleeping for some time) to make sure services that were supposed to start did. I've been running into "Automatic" services that start and then shut down (as intended) but then my current version picks them up as failed if they've already run. It was suggested that I check the event log for "Service Control Manager" errors, and report on those, the only problem now is that with the below script, we have servers who's event log can range anywhere from 20K to several hundred thousand events, and on a 2k server with 20K, this takes roughly 20 seconds to complete, and the cpu pegs near 100% while it's running.
I'm still learning powershell/wmi, so any advice would be appreciated.
function Check_Startup_Events {
BEGIN {
$time = [System.Management.ManagementDateTimeConverter]::ToDmtfDateTime((Get-Date).AddMinutes(-15))
}
PROCESS {
$results = Get-WmiObject Win32_NTLogEvent -computername $_ -Filter "LogFile='System' and SourceName='Service Control Manager' and TimeGenerated>='$time' and EventType=1" |
Format-Table -Autosize EventCode, Message
$results
}
}
$results = Get-EventLog -ComputerName w2kserver -LogName System -After $time
foreach ($result in $results){
if ($result.Source -eq "Service Control Manager" -and $result.EntryType -eq "Error"){
Write-Host $_.Description}}
I ran this against a 60k big event log on a W2K server in our environment. It takes a while to run but runs locally and does not tax the server. Not sure how you would want to output the data but I think Get-EventLog will do what you want.