Recommended Posts

Hello All,

Im looking for a piece of software that is free that can remotely audit computers in a Domain or IP/Subnet range.

I need to be able to audit both Win XP, Win 7 machines and Server 2003/2008.

Do you guys know of any free software that can achieve this? Also ideally, software that is just ran from an EXE and not needed to be installed. I have looked at options like Spiceworks but this needs installing.

I have up to 2000 machines, all in different subnets and IP ranges that need to be audited.

Any help appreciated!

I've just finished testing with Spiceworks on around 100 machines. It does give you a lot of information about the PC and it's enviroment, but I did encounter one problem. The majority of my machines are still WinXP and run with default settings a number of our machines were locked out when the security log filed up in the space of a day. When i looked in to it, it was down to Spiceworks making multiple attempts at connecting to the PC. Still Spiceworks is worth considering, you do get a lot of useful information.

AStaley.

Thanks for the responses everyone - sadly none of these meet my requirements really.

What I need is a piece of software I can walk into a classroom, copy onto a classroom domain server and run, gather all the data for the clients and then move onto the next classroom, we have in excess of 100+ classrooms.

So as you can see, i need something that requires pretty much 0% setup but will run, maybe against a script and gather the data for that domain and export to a file of some sort?

Just so you can see what you are asking to do....

PC audit software is database driven, either foxpro/access or sql. You want a software that is free, that does not use a database back ground, and that you can willy nilly put anywhere and run it? Yeah no chance. Something needs to be able to install the base database and write files and registry entries that point to this database that is unpopulated. Not going to happen standalone or in a portable install.

You can get away with running a portable app on a pc to get this info, but that is just one pc...you want to multiply this by multiple pcs, not going to happen. Best thing you can do, put it on your pc/laptop and give the software the network credentials needed to properly scan the network. There are lots of tools that can do that, free or for a price.

I used a software called emco network inventory for this, no client install just put it on a pc or laptop, give it the domain and creds to properly scan the pc's and tell it to go. Used this whenever auditing a site, tons of data.

Thanks for the responses everyone - sadly none of these meet my requirements really.

From what I take of this how to audit a domain from the open-audit standalone version.

http://www.open-audit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1464&sid=7ae62162817d0b8115764af85cd4b8e7

How To: Audit a domain.

I would think this should take min changes to the script, and could prob be automated to almost nothing, as long as you had the domain admin account which should have the permissions you needed on the client machines, etc.

It would seem you should be able to spend only a few minutes on each DC for the domain to get what you want.

I would use spiceworks. We use spiceworks and its pretty good. It shows all info about the machine. Even when its warranty expires, what software is running, what updates it has. Yes it needs to be installed but can be accessed from any other machine after that.

  • 9 months later...
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • With the current hardware prices Microsoft should lift the restriction. Then if you have the correct TPM then allow you to use X feature, if you don't have the correct TPM then don't but still actually let you run windows. 11. With a disclaimer during install that X features would be unavailable.
    • It's good for recycling of course. But commence inflation of a second hand RAM bubble and price gouging on DDR 4 inventory in 3... 2... 1...
    • Bypassed Windows 11 shows surprising stability on ancient, completely unsupported hardware by Sayan Sen When Windows 11 was first released, one of the most complained-about issues with the new desktop Microsoft OS was its higher system requirements, which pushed many relatively modern and powerful processors and devices onto the officially unsupported list. Thankfully, they have not been updated again for the base OS, though systems require four times the memory and storage if they want to run AI-powered apps and features. As such, Windows 11 technically runs on 4GB of memory, and there is no imposed restriction on the generation of memory it supports. Speaking of memory, prices are extremely high nowadays for hardware, especially DDR5 and DDR4 kits due to the current silicon shortage, and there are also reports of it affecting DDR2 as well, and it might only be a matter of time before even DDR1 gets affected. Before that could happen, an enthusiast took an ancient DDR1-based system and decided to try out Windows 11 on it to see how well the modern OS would fare on such hardware. The system runs an outdated graphics card interface standard based on AGP, or Advanced Graphics Port, called AGP 3.0 or AGP8x. AGP was essentially succeeded by the modern PCI Express (PCIe) bus standard. The user behind the experiment is retro hardware enthusiast Omores, who built the system around an ASRock ConRoe865PE motherboard based on Intel's i865PE chipset from way back in 2003, around the time when AGP was still in fashion. What made this board special back in the day was its unusual support for newer Core 2 Duo and even Core 2 Quad processors while still retaining older DDR1 memory support and an AGP8X graphics slot, making it an ideal bridge or link between two vastly different generations. Powering the machine was Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600 alongside 3GB of DDR1 RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP graphics card, one of the final and most capable GPUs released for the aging AGP interface. While installing Windows 11 itself was relatively easy by bypassing Microsoft's hardware checks, getting the graphics card fully functional proved to be some challenge. Microsoft had quietly dropped native AGP support after the earliest releases of Windows 10, meaning newer versions of Windows no longer include the necessary Graphics Address Remapping Table (GART) drivers required for proper AGP acceleration. Without them, AGP graphics cards typically boot up, though with limited functionality, and can often throw a Code 43 error in Device Manager. To work around the limitation, Omores extracted Intel's legacy AGP440 SYS driver from an early Windows 10 release and paired it with a modified INF file so Windows 11 would correctly recognize the chipset. Following this and combined with AMD's final 64-bit Catalyst AGP drivers from 2012, the Radeon HD 4650 was able to operate with full AGP 8X acceleration intact. The result was said to be surprisingly usable for hardware that is over two decades old. Hardware-accelerated H.264 video playback worked correctly and benefited apps like Firefox, while legacy applications and games ran without major graphical issues. The system also successfully completed the 3DMark 2001 benchmark, although performance naturally lagged behind what the same hardware achieves under Windows 7, which is significantly lighter than Windows 11. There was, however, one unavoidable limitation as Microsoft's Windows 11 version 24H2 introduces a mandatory SSE4.2 CPU instruction requirement that cannot be bypassed through installer modifications or registry tweaks. Since no AGP-era processor supports SSE4.2, Windows 11 version 23H2 effectively becomes the final release capable of running on such systems. Regardless, it is still a very cool feat and quite fascinating to see just how stable Windows 11 turned out to be on such unfamiliar hardware. Source: Omores (Patreon) via O_MORES (Reddit)
    • That will only really help other players that are also responsible for creating the problem.
    • Well, it's good to know that they have found a workaround to a problem that they helped create, I guess...
  • Recent Achievements

    • Reacting Well
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      BA the Curmudgeon earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Conversation Starter
      rosiecharles earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • First Post
      KMilenkoski1202 earned a badge
      First Post
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      538
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      266
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      151
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      98
    5. 5
      macoman
      66
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!