How can I search the entire LAN?

[Suture]

We're looking for a file that is on a few desktop machines, located in a hidden folder. Rather than look at every PC on the LAN, is there a way to do this from say a PDC to search every PC?

 

[FoBoT]

script it - if exist and using UNC paths
run the script under a domain account that has full access to the target machines

 

[nweaver]

yes, use domain admin, build a script to map to the C$ share (assuming these are XP Pro machines, joined to the domain) and search for the file. No need to even be on a PDC, as long as the user running the script has admin rights to the local machine (such as a domain admin would).

 

[lansalot]

for %a in (file-full-of-pc-names.txt) do dir \\%a\c$\filename-to-find.txt /s