Silently take screen shots
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I've been able to talk most employers off the ledge so I haven't had to look into this in years. As long as employees get their work done, I don't care if they watch Netflix, stream music, etc (bandwidth permitting). Employer has a couple employees watching movies brought in (thumb drives, etc), and not getting all of their work done. I can't just block the formats, because they have training videos offline that use the same formats (welding safety, forklift training, etc).
Most applications run in the system tray so the tech savvy user would likely find out after a while. I've been looking at some PowerShell. I talked them out of constant video streams because of the space that would be eaten up on network storage.
Anyone using/used anything that runs silently in the background (not shown in the system tray)? Doesn't have to be free necessarily.
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So, your employer knows they are doing this, but is giving it to IT? That doesn't make sense. This is a management issue, supervisors needing to tell them to stop. If they still aren't getting work done, that alone is enough to replace them.
Anyways, NirCmd can do this.
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@tim_g said in Silently take screen shots:
So, your employer knows they are doing this, but is giving it to IT? That doesn't make sense. This is a management issue, supervisors needing to tell them to stop. If they still aren't getting work done, that alone is enough to replace them.
Anyways, NirCmd can do this.
It's one of our clients. Normally I can talk them out of having to waste time on setting anything up. The user now has an office and privacy so they want to catch them in the act, rather than just firing them for not getting their work done. They would already have cause for reprimand or possibly firing for not getting work done, but we've had that conversation a few times. I'm just doing what they ask at this point.
I've got NirCmd installed and psexec but still getting an error that psexec.exe is not a recognized cmdlet. Here's what I have so far for testing
psexec.exe \10.2.23.140 -u "domain\administrator" -i -c nircmd.exe savescreenshot "c:\users\administrator\downloads\screenshots\shot.png" <------- Just testing the tools psexec and nircmd, but errors.
psexec.exe \10.2.23.140 -u "domain\administrator" -p "Slackware2545%" -i -c nircmd.exe loop 20 60000 savescreenshot "scr~$currdate.MM_dd_yyyy$-~$currtime.HH_mm_ss$.png "c:\users\administrators\downloads\screenshots" <-------20 seconds so I get instant feedback if this works. Will use a network resource if it is successful.
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Try just using psexec to see if that works:
psexec \\computer cmd -
I have used ActivTrak
https://activtrak.com/ -
@tim_g said in Silently take screen shots:
Try just using psexec to see if that works:
psexec \\computer cmdpsexec \hostname cmd errors saying psexec is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet. Suggestion [3,General] the command psexec was not found, but does exist in the current location.
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@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
I have used ActivTrak
https://activtrak.com/Looks pretty slick. I will have to check that out. Thanks
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We CAN get these from ScreenConnect. We don't, but we can. It DOES have a tray icon, but it's relatively tame since it is the tray icon for support, not screen caps.
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@bbigford said in Silently take screen shots:
@tim_g said in Silently take screen shots:
Try just using psexec to see if that works:
psexec \\computer cmdpsexec \hostname cmd errors saying psexec is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet. Suggestion [3,General] the command psexec was not found, but does exist in the current location.
Do you have PSTools downloaded and extracted to your Windows / System32 directory, as well as NirCMD?
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@scottalanmiller said in Silently take screen shots:
We CAN get these from ScreenConnect. We don't, but we can. It DOES have a tray icon, but it's relatively tame since it is the tray icon for support, not screen caps.
We use ScreenConnect so it isn't crazy that it'd be in their system tray. I know we can do screen shots, but not auto to my knowledge... I'm hoping to let it run every half hour for a few days.
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@tim_g said in Silently take screen shots:
@bbigford said in Silently take screen shots:
@tim_g said in Silently take screen shots:
Try just using psexec to see if that works:
psexec \\computer cmdpsexec \hostname cmd errors saying psexec is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet. Suggestion [3,General] the command psexec was not found, but does exist in the current location.
Do you have PSTools downloaded and extracted to your Windows / System32 directory, as well as NirCMD?
I opted for Windows directory when prompted. I'll double check.
Edit: looks like that is what was needed. Thanks.
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Just to CYA you should probably get HR to open a ticket with exactly what they want so it's documented.
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@irj said in Silently take screen shots:
Just to CYA you should probably get HR to open a ticket with exactly what they want so it's documented.
Agreed, they were both on the call (owner and HR). I got everything documented and will have them sign it the next time I'm in the office to implement.
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@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
I have used ActivTrak
https://activtrak.com/That software is pretty damn powerful for being a free sign up for a few users... wow. Didn't find a remote remove option, which would be nice. Had to manually run the app again to remove it from the test machine.
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@scottalanmiller said in Silently take screen shots:
We CAN get these from ScreenConnect. We don't, but we can. It DOES have a tray icon, but it's relatively tame since it is the tray icon for support, not screen caps.
SC will let you see what is 'active' on the screen.. with some delay. It's not always possible.
The other thing, is that it's not the greatest at showing what is on the screen... though - a person can determine what is being done.. It become more difficult if the remote computer has multiple monitors.
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@bbigford said in Silently take screen shots:
@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
I have used ActivTrak
https://activtrak.com/That software is pretty damn powerful for being a free sign up for a few users... wow. Didn't find a remote remove option, which would be nice. Had to manually run the app again to remove it from the test machine.
There is a remote option it is just you need to ask for it.
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@irj said in Silently take screen shots:
Just to CYA you should probably get HR to open a ticket with exactly what they want so it's documented.
Fully agree here. else it becomes a mess that could be career ending tasks
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@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
@bbigford said in Silently take screen shots:
@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
I have used ActivTrak
https://activtrak.com/That software is pretty damn powerful for being a free sign up for a few users... wow. Didn't find a remote remove option, which would be nice. Had to manually run the app again to remove it from the test machine.
There is a remote option it is just you need to ask for it.
What do you mean ask for it?
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@bbigford said in Silently take screen shots:
@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
@bbigford said in Silently take screen shots:
@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
I have used ActivTrak
https://activtrak.com/That software is pretty damn powerful for being a free sign up for a few users... wow. Didn't find a remote remove option, which would be nice. Had to manually run the app again to remove it from the test machine.
There is a remote option it is just you need to ask for it.
What do you mean ask for it?
Before they used to not have it available for paid customers
https://birchgrove.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205937800-How-do-I-deploy-the-agent-remotely- -
@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
@bbigford said in Silently take screen shots:
@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
@bbigford said in Silently take screen shots:
@dbeato said in Silently take screen shots:
I have used ActivTrak
https://activtrak.com/That software is pretty damn powerful for being a free sign up for a few users... wow. Didn't find a remote remove option, which would be nice. Had to manually run the app again to remove it from the test machine.
There is a remote option it is just you need to ask for it.
What do you mean ask for it?
Before they used to not have it available for paid customers
https://birchgrove.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205937800-How-do-I-deploy-the-agent-remotely-Ah, got it. I thought maybe you were talking about getting in touch with support for a request, but wanted to clarify.
