Active Directory tools on Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003

If you need to manage Active Directory on Windows 2000 or on the new Windows Server 2003, you can use MMC (Microsoft Management Console). The most common tasks you need for administration can be done using a graphical user interface (GUI), but there are also a few usefuly command-line utilities.

The main GUI tools are available under Administrative Tools menu:

• Active Directory Users and Computers: dsa.msc
• Active Directory Domains and Trusts: domain.msc
• Active Directory Sites and Services: dssite.msc

These cover user and group management, domain relationships, and domain replication settings.

For schema changes, you can register a new COM server using regsvr32 that allows you to manage the schema using MMC. This extension is not installed by default:

regsvr32 schmmgmt.dll

After registering, you can add the Active Directory Schema snap-in to MMC.

From the command line, a few useful tools are available:

net user username /domain
net group "Domain Admins" /domain

These query users and groups in the domain.

For more advanced directory queries, use dsquery:

dsquery user -name *

This lists user objects from Active Directory.

You can also combine tools:

dsquery user -name * | dsget user -dn

This is handy for quick checks without opening the GUI tools.

Hope this helps!