How to check the status of services on Windows computers

The services running in Active Directory domains are generally in the background until one of them hits a snag - as a result, suddenly, your print service is not working or the VPN won't connect. Monitoring the status of the services on your network is not just a healthy practice, but it can also help prevent security threats to your network. Monitoring their status helps ensure that all the essential services are up and running, and detect any harmful, unauthorized service that is running on the network. Auditing this using native Active Directory tools can be time-consuming as there are too many system logs to go through to detect any suspicious activity.

ADAudit Plus, on the other hand, picks up and processes different event logs from Active Directory and generates a comprehensive report on the status of services running on the different computers that are part of the network. This report is just one of the over 200 pre-packaged reports that ADAudit Plus can generate in a matter of a few clicks. It can also be configured to alert an administrator in real-time to any unexpected change in any of the services.

This article compares the auditing process using Active Directory tools and ADAudit Plus.