Removing old computer names?

[Guest]

We have a ton of old computer names that should be removed, indicated by the grayed-out icon next to the computer name.
How can I determine which of these are more than a month old so that I know I can safely remove them from the domain? Gary

[cmccullough]

Re: Removing old computer names?

Be careful with the greyed out icon, as this just means that the computer isn't on the browse list. In some networks, computers never seem to make it on the browse list, even though they are in use everyday.

The best way to do this it to check for the Password Age of computer accounts. NT will periodically change the password for computer accounts for security reasons.

Computer accounts are displayed under the Domain Users group as computer$. You have to expand the Global Groups option, then the Domain Users object under there shows you these accounts. Right-click on it, then choose View All User Details. This will display all users and computer accounts along with all of their properties, including Password Age in the right window.

You can filter this list to only show you computer accounts after they are displayed in the right window. Go to Edit->Find/Filter, type in $ for the search string, and for column choose UserName. Check the box to Filter out records that DO NOT match the search string and click OK.

This will leave you with only the computer accounts and you can sort by password age by clicking on the field header for password age. Password age is relevant because computers will change their password with the domain periodically, I believe the default might be around 7-10 days (Windows 2000 might be longer).

The ones that have a very large number for the password age are those that are no longer in use.

[Guest]

Re: Removing old computer names?

What happens if these users are dialling in using RAS from home. These accounts will never sync passwords. How can you tell if this is the case?

[cmccullough]

Re: Removing old computer names?

Not sure what impact RAS has on this. You'll probably have to check with Microsoft to see if this works differently.

[Guest]

Re: Removing old computer names?

We have a Deployment team that is very bad about 'cleaning up' after themselves. I was glsd to find this post. OK... Now I've done the steps outlined, but how do I actually delete them from the domain? It would be nice if, at this point, I could hilight them and do a delete, but I don't see anyway to do that. Do I just need to print the list and manually remove domain membership? Thanks for the input.

[cmccullough]

Re: Removing old computer names?

Yes, that would be about the only way to do this because in that location they are considered user accounts rather than computers.