Software Asset Management - SAM

Software Inventory Assistance

Whether we have just a few computers or a large network, a software inventory tool can make it easier to quickly know what we have and how it's being used.

The Microsoft Software Inventory Analyzer (MSIA) is a free tool available for download that can help us with our software inventory. It is built specifically to be a starting point to working with SAM.

We can use the MSIA to scan and inventory the Microsoft software that is installed on a single computer, or on multiple computers throughout a network. It generates a report that provides details of all installed Microsoft products, including the type and the number of licenses. The MSIA will work with networks that have 250 or fewer computers. The latest MSIA 5.1 features enable you to:

• Identify and report all installed Microsoft products listed under Add or Remove Programs.
  
• Consolidate the MSIA report with the Microsoft Licensing Statement (MLS) report (.xls only).
  

This information is useful for you, if you are taking care of the system administration, licensing and inventory of Microsoft software products in your organization.

BgInfo

BgInfo – Microsoft Windows SysInternal tool

How many times have you walked up to a system in your office and needed to click through several diagnostic windows to remind yourself of important aspects of its configuration, such as its name, IP address, or operating system version If you manage multiple computers you probably need BGInfo. It automatically displays relevant information about a Windows computer on the desktop's background, such as the computer name, IP address, service pack version, and more. You can edit any field as well as the font and background colors, and can place it in your startup folder so that it runs every boot, or even configure it to display as the background for the logon screen.

Monitoring Reliability and Availability of Windows 2000-based Server Systems

Event ID 1074
Events are logged when you manually shutdown the machine using the Event Tracker.

Event ID 1076
Events are logged when the machine shuts down unexpectedly and the Event Tracker pops up when the Administrator (or first user with shutdown rights) logs on to the machine.

Event ID is 6006
The time of this event is approximately the time the operating system becomes unavailable to applications.

Event ID is 6008
The event is recorded when the system restarts and Windows 2000 discovers that the previous shutdown was not clean.

Event ID is 6009
The Event Log service itself is the source of this event whenever the system is started., and the Event ID is 6009.

Event ID: 4097
Dr. Watson utility records application failure events in the Windows 2000 Application Event Log as shown below.

Event ID: 4353
Service Pack installation on Windows

Event ID: 1123
The node lost communication with cluster node

Event ID: 1069
Cluster resource 'SQL Server Fulltext ' in Resource Group 'E38SQL' failed.

Viewing Shutdown Event Tracker events

As you can see in the image above, the Description indicates the reason for the shutdown, the time, the user that initiated the shutdown, as well as the comment that was typed in the Comment box.

To view previous Shutdown Event Tracker event logs, go to the Event Viewer (Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer or Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Event Viewer) and under the System Log, search for Information Events with ID 1074 or 1076. Double click the event to bring up the Event Properties page.

Note:
1074 Events are logged when you manually shutdown the machine using the Event Tracker.
1076 Events are logged when the machine shuts down unexpectedly and the Event Tracker pops up when the Administrator (or first user with shutdown rights) logs on to the machine.

Find Uptime on Windows 2003, XP

To find uptime of Find Uptime on Windows 2003, XP boxes;

systeminfo | find "Up Time"