Get-ADComputer – Display Computers In OU Or AD Group ... - 4sysops

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If you want to know the computer objects in a particular OU or group, you can work with the GUI tools Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) or Active Directory Administrative Center. However, PowerShell and dsquery are faster and more flexible. Read 4sysops without ads for free
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Say you want to find out which computers will be affected if you link a GPO to a certain OU. You could run the following dsquery command:

Read 4sysops without ads for free dsquery computer "OU=IT,DC=contoso,DC=com" -o rdn

The result would be a list of computer names. If you omit the -o switch with the rdn value, you receive a list of Distinguished Names.

If you need further properties in addition to the name, or if you want to add a filter to the query, the Get-ADcomputer cmdlet is helpful. Like its counterpart Get-ADUser (which allows you to read user objects), you have to pass either the object name or a filter as parameter. If you want to display all computers, you can use -Filter with a wildcard:

Get-ADComputer -Filter *

As usual, you can add conditional statements to the filter to restrict the output. The following example would display all Windows 8.1 PCs provided you named the computers accordingly:

Get-ADComputer -Filter "Name -like 'Win81*'"

To limit the query to a particular OU, you need the additional parameter -SearchBase:

Get-ADComputer -Filter * -SearchBase "OU=IT, DC=contoso, DC=com"

The search in a particular group follows a similar pattern:

Get-ADComputer -Filter * -SearchBase "CN=Workstations, DC=contoso, DC=com"

If you want to list not only the default computer object attributes, you have to add -Properties * to the command.

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