How to remotely see what users are logged into Windows 7 or Vista

Question

I need to login to a remote into either a Win7 or Vista computer but when I connect I get a Logon Message "Another user is currently logged on..." but it does not specify who.

I have a domain username with admin privileges on the computer, how can I see who is logged in?

Answer 1

You can use the commands listed here to manage Terminal Server connections. query session /server:<servername> is probably the first one you want.

These all require remote procedure call, which is part and parcel with CIFS/SMB (the IPC$ share). Check that the RPC service is enabled first. Second, you can't/shouldn't (depending on network configuration) run these services over anything but the local network. If you're trying to do this sort of management over the Internet, you should be using a VPN or some creative SSH tunneling.

Answer 2

Use the eventvwr to remotely view the security log for the remote computer, and scroll through the security logs until you find a login event for the other user:

eventvwr [remote computer name without brackets]

Answer 3

You should be able to use Terminal Services Manager. If you don't have this on your machine, you can RDP into a server that has it (any server should) under Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Terminal Services Manager. Then, go to Actions and choose "Connect to Computer". That will list all active and inactive sessions and users.

Answer 4

An easy way to do this would be to use PSLOGGEDON http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb897545.aspx

from CMD navigate to where you extract the file and run psloggedon \\machinename

OR

Without downloading any software use the following command from CMD

qwinsta /server:[NAME] or [IP]

Answer 5

Use powershell, MUCH easier, already instealled, no 3rd party tool required:

$computername = 'SomeMachine-or-IP'

Get-WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem -ComputerName $computername | Select-Object -ExpandProperty UserName

Note that this will always return the user logged on to the physical machine. It will not return terminal service user or users inside a virtual machine. You will need administrator privileges on the target machine. Get-WmiObject supports the -Credential parameter if you must authenticate as someone else.

Answer 6

Another option i've thought of recently - use PSExec and get the output of netstat on the remote computer. You can easily get the IPs or hostnames of any remotely connected computers.