Have you ever looked in Active Directory Users and Computers and wondered whether or not the list of computers is a list of every computer that has ever existed since the beginning of time?  Me neither.  ;)

The following command will return a list of computers that have been inactive for X weeks.  In the example below, I'm looking for computers that have been inactive for more than 4 weeks.

Lots of applications for this simple command.  Yesterday, I was troubleshooting a SQL connection issue and even though I had enabled TCP/IP in protocols, I was still unable to make a connection.  As a sanity check, I ran a shortened version of the command below which showed me that 1433 was not open and ultimately brought me to the source of the problem. 

Launch a Command Prompt as the administrator (right click, CMD, select Run As Administrator).

Enter the following command:

Life was simple with Exchange 2003 but as life goes on, newer versions of Exchange have appeared and what was once simple has become a bit more complicated.

One of the first gotchas you notice with Exchange 2007, 2010 and 2013 is the increased security and the challenges of connecting to Exchange remotely.  One tool that I find to be invaluable is the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer which can identify various issues with your configuration.