A question came up in class this week which is asked quite often when I am teaching an Active Directory class. Whether it is the Active Directory administration class or the advanced design class I am asked, “I have a user that is logged on. I don’t think they received the correct GPO settings, is there a way to identify which domain controller authenticated them?”

The answer is “Yes!” You can. Here is how.

Have the logged on user launch the command prompt on the target computer. Type Set Logonserver the name of the domain controller that authenticated the user will be returned. See the figure below.

Using echo %username% will allow you create a script to identify the authenticating domain controller. See the figure below.

If you just desire to identify which domain controller the user retrieved group policies from you can type gpresult /r. The returned results will provide you the name of the domain controller that provided the logged on user with GPOs. See the figure below.

As you can see there are multiple ways to identify which domain controller authenticated a user.

Until next time Ride Safe!

Rick Trader
Windows Server Instructor – Interface Technical Training
Phoenix, AZ