PowerShell script to search computer in the Entire Directory.

Question

Please help me with the PowerShell script which I can run to search the computer in entire Active Directory.

And I am not part of that domain I have to change the domain in GUI of Active Directory Users and Computers and there is various domain in that domain, so I have to change the selection from 'In' Combo Box from a particular domain to the entire directory option. So, I want to do the same thing, I want script to search the computer in Entire Directory.

Answer 1

Hi SHARMA Ashutosh (HELLA),

Thank you for posting in the Microsoft Community Forums.

If you're not part of a domain, you'll need to access AD through an LDAP query or other authentication mechanism. This usually means that you need to provide valid domain credentials to query AD.

 # Import the AD module if it's not already loaded   

Import-Module ActiveDirectory   

# Set your domain credentials   

# Note: In real-world usage, you shouldn't hardcode credentials but use a more secure method to obtain them   

$username = "DOMAIN\username"   

$password = ConvertTo-SecureString "yourpassword" -AsPlainText -Force   

$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($username, $password)   

# Connect to the root domain of the AD forest (or you can specify a specific domain controller)   

# Note: Here we assume you have sufficient permissions to query the entire forest   

$forestRootDomain = (Get-AdForest).RootDomain   

# Set the search base to the root domain of the forest   

$searchBase = "LDAP://CN=$forestRootDomain,$((Get-AdRootDSEntry).distinguishedName)"   

# Perform the search, for example, searching for all computers   

$filter = "(&(objectClass=computer))"   

$computers = Get-ADObject -Filter $filter -SearchBase $searchBase -SearchScope Subtree -Credential $credential -Properties *   

# Iterate through and output the computer information   

foreach ($computer in $computers) {   

    $computer.Name   

    # You can add other properties as needed, such as $computer.DNSHostName, $computer.OperatingSystem, etc.   

}

 In the script above, please replace the $username and $password variables with your domain credentials.

Best regards

Neuvi Jiang