Workstation usage monitoring

[Steve Davis]

The college that I work for has asked that my department
review our effective workstation usage in our classrooms.
Essentially the suspicion is that we have some 50 odd
classrooms being used for an hour a day when 10 properly
scheduled classrooms could replace them if used five hours
a day. The concern is a valid one and the potential cost
savings quite enormous.

The problem that I have is the production of statistics to
make the case one way or the other. Apparently my boss has
searched for software that might produce such statistics
without much success (if anyone can suggest such a piece
of software then I would be very interested).

What I would like to do is write a program (I am very
experienced in this regard)which indicates when machines
are switched on, logged on, logged off and switched off.
This is not too difficult to do but unfortunately would
provide inaccurate statistics as our students tend to walk
away without logging off or shutting down.

My best hope at the moment is that someone out there can
suggest a way of accessing the Windows 2000 internal value
which causes the activation of a screen saver or logs a
computer off after the absence of mouse or keyboard
activity. Such a counter has to exist otherwise this
functionality would not be possible.

Any input on this would be much appreciated.

 

[Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\)]

My best hope at the moment is that someone out there can
suggest a way of accessing the Windows 2000 internal value
which causes the activation of a screen saver or logs a
computer off after the absence of mouse or keyboard
activity. Such a counter has to exist otherwise this
functionality would not be possible.

Hi

A couple of ways to log the user off after a set time of inactivity:

A)

Winexit.scr in the Win2k3 Server RK kit (will work on Win2k and WinXP
at least)

Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&DisplayLang=en

(The kit will install on WinXP or later)

If the users are non-admins on the local computer you must add Set Value and
Create Subkey permissions for the group Everyone on this registry key:
HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion

How can I use the WinExit screen saver without granting Admin rights?
http://www.jsifaq.com/SUBC/tip1100/rh1179.htm

Logoff Screen Saver Does Not Function in Windows NT
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;156677


B)

You could create a scheduled job on each computer that logs the user
off or shuts the computer down after a set amount of idle time (the
scheduler in Win2k and WinXP has an idle time setting):

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]