EventLog Query Options

This post is actually an answer to Grant’s question.
I quote:

"I discovered eventcombmt today and have been playing round with it. I have an application whereby I want to write out a listing showing any/all accesses by a particular user. I want to run this once a day. I have not been able to figure out what the commandline switch is to specify to only scan the last 24 hours.
Do you know what it is?"

 

Well Grant, If you want to use EventCombMT, you can use the command line parameters /before & /after but then you’ll need to specify the full date and time in the form of MMDDYYYYHHMMSS. The date-time format needs to be exactly 14 characters, and both parameters must be used together. I think this only works in the ALTools version.

A more elegant way, would be to use Log Parser and query the Security EventLog using:

LogParser "SELECT * INTO C:\myEvents.xml FROM \\Server1\Security,\\Server2\Security WHERE EXTRACT_TOKEN(Strings, 1, ‘|’) = ‘myUser’ AND TimeGenerated >= TO_LOCALTIME(SUB(SYSTEM_TIMESTAMP(), TIMESTAMP(’23:59:59′, ‘hh:mm:ss’)))"

(You can open the C:\myEvents.xml with Excel as an XML table).

 

But… A simpler way, would be to use PsLogList from the Sysinternals Suite and run the command:

PsLoglist \\Server1,Server2 -s -h 24 security |find "myUser" >c:\myEvents.log

 

Which one do you prefer?

Scanning multiple EventLogs with EventCombMT

Have you ever needed to search for a specific event on many computers?
if you did, and didn’t use EventCombMT… shame on you!

EventCombMT is a multithreaded tool (hence the ‘MT’ at the end) that you can use to search the event logs of several different computers for specific events, all from one central location.

you can set the EventCombMT to search for individual event IDs, multiple event IDs or a range of event IDs, a specific event source with or without specific text in the event’s description, you can also set how many minutes, hours, or days back to scan the event logs.

EventCombMT has many built-in searches such as such as Account Lockouts (Event IDs 529, 644, 675, 676, and 681) and NETLOGON Failed To (De)Register DNS Records (Event IDs 5774, 5775, 5781, 5788)

After the search finishes, the program opens the local \TEMP folder (or the folder you selected as the output folder), which will contain a number of text file logs for the search action:
EventCombMT.txt: The log for the program’s own actions
%machine%-_LOG.txt: Results for the search on that particular machine’s log.

The EventCombMT.exe also has many command line options, such as:

- To load a search that you previously saved use: /load:<name of saved search>

- To add all DCs in your domain to the list of servers to search use: /dc

- To add DCs from another domain use: /dc:<domain name>

- To add servers from a text file use: /file:<path to file>

- To specify events to search for use: /evt:”events” (for example: /evt:"644 528 639")

- To specify the types of events to collect use: /et:weisafasu OR /et:all

  (w – Warning, e – Error, i – Informational, sa – Success Audit, fa – Failure Audit, su – Success)

- To specify event logs types use: /log:sysappsecdsfrsdns OR /log:all

  (sys = System, app = Application, sec = Security, ds = Directory Services, frs = FRS, dns = DNS)

- To specify the output directory use: /outdir:”path to output folder”

- To specify the number of threads use: /t:<number> (The default is 25)

- To specify the Event Source use: /source:”event source” (for example: /source:netlogon)

- To specify the text that needs to be in the event use: /text:"text to match"

NOTE: The search is case insensitive.

- To automatically start searching use the /start argument

 

The EventCombMT utility is included both in the Windows Server 2003 resource kit tools http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd and in the Account Lockout and Management Tools http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7af2e69c-91f3-4e63-8629-b999adde0b9e

Note:
The EventCombMT.exe from the Win2K3RK is from April 2003, and the EventCombMT.exe from the ALTools is from May 2002 but seems to have more options under the options menu. Weird…