Peter Hinchley

I often need to write scripts that take the name of a computer as an input. This can be accomplished by prompting the user running the script to enter the name of a computer, but what if the user types the name incorrectly? Or what if the computer has been decommissioned and no longer exists in the directory? These potential issues can be avoided by writing code to specifically launch the object picker dialog from Active Directory Users and Computers.

The dialog looks like this:

It's surprisingly difficult to directly interface to the object picker. Fortunately Sly Gryphon has developed a .NET wrapper for the dialog that is available from CodePlex. I downloaded and compiled the code using Visual Studio 2008 to generate the wrapper (CubicOrange.Windows.Forms.ActiveDirectory.dll). I then created a new Windows console application named FindComp using the code shown below (adding the wrapper and System.Windows.Forms as references). The code ensures the object picker dialog is restricted to selecting a single computer from the current domain. It then writes the fully qualified path of the selected computer to the console window.

Imports CubicOrange.Windows.Forms.ActiveDirectory
Imports System.Windows.Forms

Module Module1
  Sub Main()
    Dim ObjectPicker As New DirectoryObjectPickerDialog
    Dim ObjectPickerResult As DialogResult
    Dim SelectedObject As DirectoryObject

    ObjectPicker.AllowedObjectTypes = ObjectTypes.Computers
    ObjectPicker.DefaultObjectTypes = ObjectTypes.Computers
    ObjectPicker.AllowedLocations = Locations.JoinedDomain
    ObjectPicker.DefaultLocations = Locations.JoinedDomain
    ObjectPicker.MultiSelect = False

    ObjectPickerResult = ObjectPicker.ShowDialog()
    If ObjectPickerResult = DialogResult.OK Then
      SelectedObject = ObjectPicker.SelectedObject
      System.Console.Write(SelectedObject.Path)
    End If
  End Sub
End Module

We can now wrap the compiled application into a command line script as shown below. The script invokes FindComp, displays the object picker, and following the selection of a computer, assigns the fully qualified path of the computer to the variable sComputer, which can then be utlised as required.

Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set oExec = oShell.Exec("FindComp.exe");
Do While oExec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream <> True
  sComputer = oExec.StdOut.ReadLine
Loop

WScript.Echo sComputer

Note: FindComp.exe will return the fully qualified path of the selected computer in the form of:

LDAP://domain.net/CN=CompName,CN=Computers,DC=domain,DC=net

I used ILMerge to remove the external dependence on CubicOrange.Windows.Forms.ActiveDirectory.dll by merging the DLL with FindComp.exe.

You can download either the resultant merged executable file or the project source code.

The requirements for using this program are the .NET Framework and the Active Directory Users and Computers console.