How to check your SID's for Windows server

For an IT Professional it is quite common to have a virtual LAB environment and it is also common to face issue related to similar SID (Security Identifier) on multiple VMs on the network.

Earlier there was a tool “NewSID” was being used to overcome from this problem but that’s been retired and not being supported by Microsoft anymore. The recommended way is to use “SysPrep” to change SID of any windows operating system.

Before proceeding with “SysPrep”, it’s better to understand how to check SID!! There is a free tool can be downloaded from sysinternal called “PsGetSID”, I’ll show how easily one can check machine’s SID.

For installation just copy PsGetsid.exe on executable path and follow the underneath steps

1.       I’ve already downloaded the tool and kept in under C:\ (It’s not mandatory to keep the file in C drive)

   2.   Open Command prompt and navigate to the location where the tool kept (in our case it is C drive) and type “psgetsid <COMPUTERNAME>” in case of local computer else type “psgetsid \\<COMPUTERNAME>” in case of remote computer on network.

   

   3.       Detailed syntax for usage:

  psgetsid [\\computer[,computer[,...] | @file] [-u username [-p password]]] [account|SID]

-u	Specifies optional user name for login to remote computer.
-p	Specifies optional password for user name. If you omit this you will be prompted to enter a hidden password.
Account	PsGetSid will report the SID for the specified user account rather than the computer.
SID	PsGetSid will report the account for the specified SID.
Computer	Direct PsGetSid to perform the command on the remote computer or computers specified. If you omit the computer name PsGetSid runs the command on the local system, and if you specify a wildcard (\\*), PsGetSid runs the command on all computers in the current domain.
@file	PsGetSid will execute the command on each of the computers listed in the file.

If you want to see a computer's SID just pass the computer's name as a command-line argument. If you want to see a user's SID, name the account (e.g. "administrator") on the command-line and an optional computer name.

Specify a user name if the account you are running from doesn't have administrative privileges on the computer you want to query. If you don't specify a password as an option, PsGetSid will prompt you for one so that you can type it in without having it echoed to the display.

  Reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897417