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Know Who Logged On to Your Computer in Your Absence

By Codrut Nistor

Posted in How-to, Windows-7

Normally it is not possible to know who used your computer when you were not present. The only thing that Windows 7 offers under normal settings is to view the name of the user who recently logged off. In home environments this configuration is quite ideal and even if home users are not able to see the recently logged off user name it hardly matters to them. However in production environments where security is a major concern administrators would definitely want to know who used which computer and when? To solve the purpose Microsoft offers a promising audit feature using which you can monitor a computer and can find who used the computer and at what time? You can enable Audit Logon Event audit policy to track logon events on your computer and to do so you need to follow the steps given below:

  1. Logon to your Windows 7 computer with any account that is a member of Administrators group.
  2. Go to start menu and in the search box type gpedit.msc command and press enter.
  3. In the snap-in under Computer Configuration expand Windows Settings and then expand Security Settings.
  4. Expand Local Policies and click on Audit Policy.
  5. In the right pane double click on Audit logon events and from the opened Properties box check both Success and Failure checkboxes to enable logon event logging.
  6. Click on Ok button to accept the settings.
  7. Use Command Prompt to update your computer with the latest configuration by typing gpupdate /force command in it.