Who… What… Where…

I will be using this site to post on a number of subjects including time saving scripts, technological investigations and topical issues on a number on platforms including Windows and MacOSX.

By using a VB scripts we can perform a WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) connection to a host to execute a query against.

Below is an example of a WMI query connecting to the host named “computer”, once connected will loop around each drive letter which is a hard drive displaying the drive letter and total disk space in GB

On Error Resume Next
Const HARD_DISK = 3

Set objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts:” & “{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\” & “computer” & “\root\cimv2″)

if Err.Number = 0 then
‘ Add WMI Query Script in here!

Set colDisks = objWMIService.ExecQuery (“Select * from Win32_LogicalDisk Where DriveType = ” & HARD_DISK & “”)
For Each objDisk in colDisks

Wscript.Echo objDisk.DeviceID + ” Disk Size (GB): ” + CStr(Round((((objDisk.Size / 1024)/1024)/1024),1))

Next

else
Wscript.echo “Could not connect to ” & “computer” & ” error ” & Err.Number
End If

Err.Clear

The above WMI query can be combined with an Active Directory query to make the script more versatile (further information is here), an example of this script is below:

On Error Resume Next
Const ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE = 2
Const HARD_DISK = 3

Set objConnection = CreateObject(“ADODB.Connection”)
Set objCommand =   CreateObject(“ADODB.Command”)
objConnection.Provider = “ADsDSOObject”
objConnection.Open “Active Directory Provider”

Set objCOmmand.ActiveConnection = objConnection
objCommand.CommandText = “Select Name from ‘LDAP://OU=MyServers,DC=Domain,DC=co,DC=uk’ ” & “Where objectClass=’computer’”
objCommand.Properties(”Page Size”) = 1000
objCommand.Properties(”Searchscope”) = ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE
Set objRecordSet = objCommand.Execute
objRecordSet.MoveFirst

Do Until objRecordSet.EOF
Wscript.Echo “Computer Name: ” & objRecordSet.Fields(“Name”).Value

Set objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts:” & “{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\” & objRecordSet.Fields(“Name”).Value & “\root\cimv2″)

if Err.Number = 0 then

‘ Add WMI Query Script in here!

else
Wscript.echo “Could not connect to ” & objRecordSet.Fields(“Name”).Value & ” error ” & Err.Number
End If

Err.Clear
objRecordSet.MoveNext
Loop

A number of WMI queries used can be found in the reference page WMI_Queries

In an Active Directory environment there is often a requirement to query objects within the AD  database, either returning selected attribute values or using this information to for further queries.

The same principles apply across any object type, the script below connects via LDAP, performs a query and returns selected values from Active Directory.

The below script will query all objects in the OU MyServers and subtree, in the domain Domain.co.uk, of type computer, returning the attributes Name and Location.

Const ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE = 2

Set objConnection = CreateObject(”ADODB.Connection”)
Set objCommand = CreateObject(”ADODB.Command”)
objConnection.Provider = “ADsDSOObject”
objConnection.Open “Active Directory Provider”

Set objCOmmand.ActiveConnection = objConnection
objCommand.CommandText = “Select Name, Location from ‘LDAP://OU=MyServers,DC=Domain,DC=co,DC=uk’ ” & “Where objectClass=’computer’”
objCommand.Properties(”Page Size”) = 1000
objCommand.Properties(”Searchscope”) = ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE
Set objRecordSet = objCommand.Execute
objRecordSet.MoveFirst
Do Until objRecordSet.EOF

‘ Insert Operators here
objRecordSet.MoveNext

Loop

Once the query has been run the results can then be used for any requirement, a simple example below is to display  the name of the computer followed by the Location attribute stored in AD.

……
Do Until objRecordSet.EOF

‘ Insert Operators here
Wscript.Echo “Computer Name: ” & objRecordSet.Fields(”Name”).Value
Wscript.Echo “Location: ” & objRecordSet.Fields(”Location”).Value

objRecordSet.MoveNext
Loop

Any attribute of the object can be displayed as long as it was requested in the initial query; Select Name, Location from…. , attribute names are LDAP attributes rather than field names seen in the Active Directory Users and Computers mmc. A list of attributes can be found here; Active Directory LDAP Attributes

One way to enhance this script further is for each computer selected perform a WMI query against it; VB WMI Query

There are a number of ways to query the Active Directory database to export objects and there attributes. One of the most common groups of tools are provided by Microsoft; dsget and dsquery.

Query Group Members

To display the member of a specific group use the dsget group command

dsget group “CN=My Group,OU=Domain Groups,DC=Domain,DC=co,DC=uk” -members

The above command will list the UPN of the users in My Group, if more information is required from each of the users within My Group the output can be piped into another dsget command

To display the member of a specific group use the dsget group command

dsget group “CN=My Group,OU=Domain Groups,DC=Domain,DC=co,DC=uk” -members | dsget user -upn -display -disabled -acctexpires

This commnd above will list the users in the group My Group with there UPN, display name, if the account is disabled and when the account expires.

The command line tool tasklist without any switches will simply display the local currently running processes and if the /S parameter is used process’s running on a remote machine can be queried.

Now all of this isn’t really worth writing about you might say, however one switch that I found useful was the command tasklist /svc ; this will display a list of all running processes along with any related services attached to that process.