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• Cancel Connection Information
• Change NT Password from Win95 Machine
• Change User Rights
• Create a List of Available Workstations
• Deleting Orphan Shares
• Determine if 95 User is Logged into a Network
• Determine if a Server is a PDC
• Determine if a User is Connected to a Server
• Determine NT Admin Rights
• Display a policy statement before logon
• Distinguish between NT 4 Server and Workstation
• Enable MSClient
• Get a List of Attached Servers to NT Server
• Get NT Users Primary Domain
• Get remote user name
• How to Create NT Groups
• How to Get Domain Controller of Authenticating Server
• Install apps on NT without system admin priviledge
• Itemize Network Services
• List Members in an NT Domain
• List of Users Who Have Group Access
• Listing Hidden Shares
• Look up Access Permissions to an NT Resource
• Map Drive to NetLogon Share Handles Z Drive
• Map Root and Map to Share under NT and 95
• Network invalid error
• NTFS - POSIX subsystem and Case Sensitivity
• NTFS Detection
• Only Map Drive when Its Not
• Refresh Group Policy using SecEdit
• Remove Workstation from a Domain
• Retrieve a List of Computer Accounts on NT Domain
• Set up User with Grant DialIn Permissions Set
• UDF -GetUserNameEx
• Why Do Certain Win32 Apps Misbehave in NT Services
• WWNET32I Extender with Older WinBatch
• wxxFileUsers Functions
• wXXGetUser and Netname

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How to Determine if a Server is a PDC or BDC

Keywords:   primary domain controller PDC backup domain controller BDC 

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Question:

Does anyone know of a way to determine a the status of an NT server programmatically, ie. read a registry value? In other words, how do you determine if the server is a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) or Backup Domain Controller (BDC), etc. ?

Answer:

Maybe look at:

wntServerType
wntServiceInf

in the Win32 Network Extender.

Here's where it's located in the registry, so you can use RegQueryValue to retrieve it from HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ProductOptions\ProductType, with:

   RegQueryValue(@regmachine, "CurrentControlSet\Control\ProductOptions[ProductType]")        

ProductType will be one of three values:

• SERVERNT - Stand Alone Server
• LANMANNT - Primary Domain Controller
• LANSECNT - Backup Domain Controller

or it might appear as:

   WINNT = WorkStation
   LANMANNT = Enterprise Server
   SERVERNT = Server

A real quick way to determine the PDC is to do a "net time /domain:domainname". This always sets the time from the PDC, giving a message to that extent. You could pipe the output into a file and then parse it for "\\".

I mention this because it is not always the case that the registry security allows lookups, specially if someone has run C2config against the registry.

We use this in our login and it works for both 4.0 and 3.51. Don't do a case sensitive compare as they are not always in caps.

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Article ID:   W13528

Filename:   Determine if a Server is an NT PDC.txt

File Created: 2000:02:08:12:21:44

Last Updated: 2000:02:08:12:21:44