Re: Switching on & Off

[burningdog]

I would check out WMI (Windows management interface). Using that you can access a lot of windows internals, it's mostly read only stuff but there is plenty you can do with it. I have used it before from perl with a decent amount of success. Just do a search for perl and WMI for some examples out there. Microsoft’s docs are obviously not geared towards perl but once you get basic communication going with WMI the docs will be clearer.

[zebedee]

WMI is *definitely* a good way to go. I have used it (via Tcl/Tcom, so it does work outside of MS languages / tools) to audit OS and software on remote machines and also to install software on remote machines - more as a proof of concept, and not as many as 800 machines, but it definitely works. You can run remote applications, reboot machines, etc. as long as you have the correct privileges.