User Manager Pro 5.09

Lieberman Software's User Manager Pro 5.09 is an agentless solution that lets administrators modify local users, groups, and other settings on multiple computers in one step. The software accesses machines in parallel through multithreading. User Manager Pro is easy to install, easy to use, and feature-rich.

My first task for User Manager Pro was creating a Help desk account across a plethora of platforms (the software supports Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT 4.0). After confirming that I had administrative access to each of the machines, User Manager Pro created the accounts, each with a different random password (generated by the Random Password Generator add-on feature). User Manager Pro can also schedule jobs for deferred execution and automatically retry failed executions at specified intervals.

Two other features that intrigued me are File Lockout and Virtual Network Computing (VNC) integration. File Lockout lets you set a Deny Everyone ACL on a remote file. VNC integration pushes a VNC service, such as RealVNC or TightVNC, to a remote machine, sets a random password, connects, and disables or uninstalls the service when you disconnect.

User Manager Pro's stellar reporting functionality made me want some alerting features or at least the ability to schedule reporting tasks so that I could script my own alerts. I was annoyed that the random password list and job schedule are tied to each installation of User Manager Pro. Otherwise, User Manager Pro is a great tool.

—Adam Carheden