Windows 2000 Quick Fixes

Find out who is connected to your computer

Although it’s more often necessary to know who is connected to a server, it can still be important to know who is accessing your computer even if you’re using it as a workstation. Windows 2000 Professional supports up to ten concurrent connections, so you might have as many as ten other users accessing your computer at a given time. Perhaps you need to shut down your system but want to warn others first so they can close open files. Or maybe you just want to keep track for security reasons.

In Windows NT you use the Server object in the Control Panel to determine connections and files in use. In Windows 2000 you use the Computer Management console.

View current sessions and files in use

You can view which users are connected to your computer as well as which files they have open. You can disconnect individual users or disconnect all users, which is useful when you need to shut down your system or want to disconnect unauthorized users. Likewise, you can close individual files as well as all open files:

1. Right-click My Computer and choose Manage to open the Computer Management console.

2. Open the Shared Folders branch and then the Sessions node, which shows current connections.

3. Select the connection you want to terminate and choose Action → Close Session, or simply right-click the connection and choose Close Session from the context menu.

4. To close all connections, choose Action → Disconnect All Sessions or right-click in the right pane and choose ...