Monitor Windows XP services

[D8TA]

I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on monitoring services? I have 3 major applications, Antivirus, iCollect(asset management software), Radia(Software/Patch distribution) that I need to monitor across a LAN. There are approximately 4500 PC's and I am looking for a way or agentless application to monitor that these services are still running. Anyone have any helpful suggestions? I have no idea how to ensure these are running or even monitor them. I've tried Google but am not real good and googling for queries. I found this board awhile back and well....here I am. This board rocks and you guys/gals are great!! Any suggestions would be helpful, even if I could get steered in the right direction.

[KJxp]

Do you program? I'm sure it's not too hard to do what you want in a language like VB or C. Other than that, I don't know offhand of any program. There might be one, though.

[D8TA]

No, I wish I did but maybe someday I'll give it a try. I've looked at VB but still don't have a grasp on the syntax to accomplish what I'm after.

[Saraband]

a google might be like

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=mo...a+network&meta=

[Marsden]

Are you monitoring the clients or the servers?

[Marsden]

Services run until something stops them. Set them to automatically restart if they fail. Use the last option to reboot the client machine if the service fails. No need to monitor each client.

[D8TA]

I would be monitoring the client but in our environment we have users who are Administrators of the local machine and they like to disable the Radia service. We are not in a domain environment yet but in the meantime I need to make sure these services stay running and if they are stopped/disabled then either notified or have them restart.

I hope that clears things up. These are all clients running WinXPsp2 in a non-domain environment. I wouldn't mind hiding these so the users couldn't see the services to disable but not sure if that is even possible.

[Martin Zugec]

You could create quite simple WMI script... Or (in your case) if you are not familiar with scripting use wmic ...

[D8TA]

It says WMIC requires Administrator rights, the majority of the PC users only have Power User rights. I would have to run this for all 4500+ workstations?

I will continue to read up on WMIC, I am far from a programmer.

[Martin Zugec]

Wmic /node:name_of_pc1,name_of_pc2 /failfast:on service etc...

What I wanted to say is it will be not running on workstations, but on your administrators PC.

And use it with reporting to html form...

[Mango]

You can use the local policy editor to prevent users from even viewing the services by using:

start -> run -> gpedit.msc [enter]

then browse to:

Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Microsoft Management Console\Restricted/Permitted snap-ins

And then disable the 'services' snap-in.

Though I read your users are logged in as administrator, that's not really a good idea IMHO. They can disable the policy again, but it's worth to try.

Or make them power users or something.

[edit] ugh I only read just now there are 4500+ pc's, so going over each pc setting the policy isn't really an option lol. Guess it'd be easier if you had a domain with AD.

[Martin Zugec]

Or create script with subinacl to change their access rights to this services...

I dont believe there is end user that will be able to change this settings.

[D8TA]

Wmic /node:name_of_pc1,name_of_pc2 /failfast:on service etc...

What I wanted to say is it will be not running on workstations, but on your administrators PC.

And use it with reporting to html form...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Can wmic read from text file for the PC names? All of our PC names are the asset tags that are applied to the physical machine, ex.) PC20456C I am wondering if wmic can read from a text file that would have all the PC names to turn these services on.

What about a login script to turn these certian services on?

[Martin Zugec]

Every command can read from text file First syntax is

for /f "usebackq" %%i IN (`type computers.txt`) DO wmic /node:%%i service where name="test" get state

second (wmic native) is

wmic /node:@computers.txt service where name="test" get state

[Martin Zugec]

BTW Include switch /failfast:on - it will ping computer before trying to connect, e.g. it will be much faster if there is lot of computers offline