Bye bye my vbscripts?

OK, so I've moved onto Powershell these days, but I thought I'd start my blog posting with one of my favourites. Its adapted from a great idea at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/resources/qanda/apr05/hey0429.mspx and essentially makes the description field of your computer accounts dynamically populated.

Why might you want to do this you ask?

Well, have you ever needed to find a computer name easily without needing to get the user to find it out? This script if run at login will populate the description field of the computer account with: username, current AD site, make and model of machine, time logged in, e.g.

Joe Bloggs logged on in Paris using HP 6710b, 08:30.

Simply sort your computer accounts by the description column and hey presto easy to find the computer the user is logged into. Simple, but very effective.

I also used it to easily sort computers into separate OU's for laptops and desktops.


On Error Resume Next
Set objSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")

Set objUser = GetObject("LDAP://" & objSysInfo.UserName)
Set objComputer = GetObject("LDAP://" & objSysInfo.ComputerName)
objSitename = objSysInfo.SiteName

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_ComputerSystem")

For Each objItem in colItems
strManufacturer = objItem.Manufacturer
strModel = objItem.Model
Next

strMessage = objUser.CN & " logged on in " & objSitename & " using " & strManufacturer & ", " & strModel & " " & Now & "."

objComputer.Description = strMessage
objComputer.SetInfo


(By the way you'll need to add the 'Write description' property on the OU(s) where your computer accounts reside to something like Authenticated Users.)