How to logoff users when their session time expires.... 1

[ephran]

Hi, I have almost gone blind reading through all the policy options in the default domain policy, and it seems like this SHOULD be very easy. However, I have tried experimenting with a test user, whose active session limit, idle session limit etc...are all set to 5 minutes. I have the policy set to forcibly log off users whose logon times have expired, yet the user is still logged on after 15 minutes. I have tried the user on a workstation as well as the server box.
About my setup, I am running W2K server sp2 with active dir, DNS, DHCP etc etc....my clients are W2K pro. There are no local users except on the server box (admin and backup admin acounts) I have the test user in a seperate OU with the policy in question attached to that OU.
From what I have read, it sounds like the policy entry "Log off users when logon time expires" really only pertains to their logon hours that are set in the user/properties/account/logon hours tab. Is there somewhere else I need to look at to enable the session limits?
TIA,

James

 

[SoulSe]

You're right, "Log off users when logon time expires" only applies to their specified logon hours.

There doesn't seem to be a way to achieve this with GPs. What you could try doing is:

Step one - Download the console from here:

http://pobox.com/~stevemil

One of the files included is called "shutdown.exe"

Step Two - Go to your workstations and schedule this program to run every x minutes and only if the computer has been idle for x amount of time. Schedule it to run as follows: "shutdown.exe /l /f /q"
This will force a logoff without prompting after x amount of idle time.

Your other option is to use rundll32.exe with user32.dll, but I've had problems with that route. Amazing that M$ haven't included an option which should be so basic.

Hope this helps!

 

[ephran]

Thanks SoulSe,

I'll play around with the shutdown option a bit. Someone out there may have written a 3rd party solution to this as well, so going to do some searching. Thanks for your assitance.

 

[SoulSe]

Cool, I've used this option on all my stations, works like a bomb!

It can be a problem for big networks with many client machines though...