Scan network for software tool??

J

Jonny Two Shoes

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Hi there,

Can any of you suggest any good easy programs that will scan any PC via LAN and tell me exactly what software they have installed. We will be running an audit near the end of this year and by then I will be pretty much responsible for what goes down here.

A tool like this will make my life very easy to check that we have the correct amount of licenses. Not sure what to google for as it comes up mainly with spyware scanning and such.

Thanks :)
 
There is ton's of Stuff. I use OCS Inventory or Winventory for my stuff. OCS you can install an agent on each machine, and it reports back at regular intervals. Winventory does a once off scan. if you've only got desktops, Winventory is fine. If you got road warriors, OCS is better. It does full scans of Hardware and software. another package is called Spiceworks. Whats nice about these packages is that they store the data in a db and present via a pretty web interface. first two are Open Source as well, so you can customize as much as you like.

Give them a try
 
Everest is also really nice. Corporate Edition has a nice price tag attached to it. Depends on how serious you are about internal asset tracking, and how big your organization is.
 
Hey I just reached Master :p:p :D

Anyway thanks for suggestions :) first one I tried was Spiceworks. It appears to be freeware surprisingly and works with IExporer.

With a few minor glitches on setup it works like a bomb now. It gives me all the info I need about any pc on the network I ask for, thanks again :)

Will check the others as well. Maybe if they are any good I can present a good business case to my manager to order one of these products. The organisation I work for is pretty huge....Chicago, Australia, some African countries, Asia etc

Im just interested in SA main branch where I work at though. That would be my major responsibility if my colleague resigns, which she is threatening to do :(
Im pretty new here but have already discovered their lack of proper interest in IT development is rather disappointing, our total staff is 3 incl MIS manager. I run around like crazy sometimes and our jobs often overlap. So tools like these can make things a bit easier.
 
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Hello and welcome to the world of Corporate IT, where it takes two months to decide whether the IT guy needs a computer, and two minutes to decide if the MD does. We're a corporate with a presence in 68 countries. We have 5 branches in SA alone, and we are one of the smallest ones. In grand total, we have 127 people in IT. Our head office has 38 alone. Here in SA, there are two of us, to control the whole country. Hardware, software, ERP, mail, BI, networks, the whole lot. And to get them to buy a mouse takes two weeks. So I can promise, it ain't gonna get easier.

Tip: Scripting is the only way to survival. Scripting, and automation tools
 
Graviti I HEAR YOU :D seriously its a pain but gotta live with it.

I have made logon scripts and scripts that automatically backup NB user data to their network drive on fileserver, very easy to set up on each PC.

However this place is drowning in policies and BOP's, I don't think any innovation is going to change how we work :( We still sit with Office 2000 and Lotus Notes 6.5 and it is all standard and cant be updated.

We don't even have remote desktop support for our reps and other sites yet we have to troubleshoot via telephone for Capetown, Durban, plus we have a working agreement for another department who used to have their own IT in this building. eish!

At least it makes my job interesting lol :)

EDIT --- The thing that makes it worse is the users OMW!!!!! shame!!! :)

Corporate in America just give us commands we must follow as well....as if we have time :p
Thank goodness today was pretty quite, however my colleague who Im still learning from is on leave from Monday to the 10th May so Im stressing especially seeing as I know whats coming next week...laptop upgrades etc. Story of my life..ha ha
 
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JTS, at least you can say "Still on Lotus 6.5". We've just upgraded from 5.01 to version 7. And only because our Corporate Chairperson started complaining because a rival had a better email system than him. We get Office 2003 luckily. But wow. Servers are an issue. You talk about automatic backup. We have one file server, and that is it. So our remote branches have to talk remote. Backup a 14MB Powerpoint file over a 256KB line, whilst the Operations Controllers are trying to process orders. Jug's of coffee, nevermind cups. For remote support, try VNC. The licensing model shouldn't conflict with any of your policies with regards to licenses. VNC makes life so nice.

But seriously, there are some nice tools out there that, if all your policies are holding you back on are licenses, then you'll be sorted. Open source is a dream.

But by the sounds of it, you need to get some form of support infrastructure in place.

All I can say is good luck.
 
Oh, wait, I just assumed that you have some form of VPN in place. I hope for your sakes that you do!

G
 
Im the one who got VNC up and running but had no real chance to use it much. But yes we have VNC for remote, at least I do :)

As for VPN yes we do use VPN however some of the users can never get it to work when they are abroad, especially with edge and 3g cards even though they should (mostly because they don't know how to operate the software even with step by step instructions). Also we don't support ADSL for VPN because of our Proxy in Chicago and the security risk it poses to open a line locally into our network, so ADSL users experience dial-up speeds. More users complain to me as usual :( lol (thank goodness i was a waiter for almost 4 years,i can handle complaints). Well at least we get diginet lines to our close branches (although Telkom messed that up completely!!), however our branches in Durbs and Cape also dial-in to fileserver for backup

I think our policies prohibit us from using any third party software, even open source. The only way to get VNC out in the open is for me to somehow get permission from Chicago.

Thanks for the suggestions though, Im definatley looking into all of it :)

Oh yes we also only have 1 fileserver for our main division in SA, and both our Lotus Notes Server and Fileserver keep running out of space, mostly because users store complete junk on them. Never a dull moment hey :) well from listening to you I know Im not the only one with problems :p
 
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