While most clean out the dust etc on their computers on a interval basis of say every 3 months etc, I was asked if there was a way to determine which computers were used from those that havent been used, so that only computers that were used for an X-many hours be targeted for cleaning vs ALL = hundreds of them.
I know that a hard drive contains run hour information as part of its SMART data which could be used, but that would require manually visiting each computer to poll the hard drive for its run hours, and if your already there doing that you might as well be blowing out the dust etc. I dont know of any program that can remotely get smart data from a fleet of systems over the network and use this hour value from each system with system name as a means to collect and keep track of what computers are used more than others and which ones need frequent cleaning while others might be able to go 6 months or longer without getting blown out because if the system is off or sleeping the fans aren't spinning to act like a PC vacuum cleaner with the inside of the case act like as the bag collecting the dust.
When the workstations are not used for 15 minutes they go into a sleep mode, so they are always powered but in sleep mode fans stop spinning so its pretty much the same as an off state.
I was thinking of implementing my own solution but my skills are limited and a console window would be up as a computer use odometer if I wrote something to do this as for I have never written a program to act as a service before hidden.
So Figured I would check to see if anyone knows of any free or low cost software that is able to keep track of run hours for workstations as an hourly odometer or if I will have to look for a way to make my own service that writes to a text file that can be accessed through a share from anywhere on network and see what systems need to be cleaned vs others that can be skipped.
