Log files on Windows Server 2003 with a domain

Kremerica

Senior member
Jan 6, 2004
632
0
76
All,
I work at a company with about 40 desktop pc's which are all connected to a windows 2003 server with a domain. The profiles are all hosted locally and the user accounts are used for file access privileges and web access.
All the machines use this domain and server for web traffic, and we have a separate print server for printing.
All the machines also have at least 3 mapped network drives back to the windows 2003 domain controller machine.
All the individual pc's are using specific ip addresses not dhcp.

How do I view the log files in windows server 2003 to see activity by the users?

for example, one of the questions I have been asked is, "who deleted "ZZZ" folder?"
I assume that viewing file activity logs on the server will tell me which IP address, or which user account accessed or deleted the files....

thanks,
 

MustISO

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,927
12
81
I believe you have to have auditing enabled or if it is enabled you should be able to look at the audit log.
 

stash

Diamond Member
Jun 22, 2000
5,468
0
0
Auditing is a two-step process. You have to enable a global auditing setting on the server through Group Policy. In this case, it sounds like you want to audit object access.

Next, you need to enable auditing on a particular file or directory through the NTFS permissions tab. Be careful how much auditing you do, as object access auditing can easily bring a file server to its knees if you don't audit sparingly.