How to know whether an user account exists

Question

1. How do I know if an user account exists on my Windows OS (Vista)? I need this information from a stand alone machine that hasn't joined any domain.

2. I want to know whether an user is a part of a group, for example is a user 'admin' part of 'Administrators' group or not?

Answer 1

You can work out if a local account exists through the System.Security.Principal namespace using the following code.

bool AccountExists(string name)
{
    bool bRet = false;

    try
    {
        NTAccount acct = new NTAccount(name);
        SecurityIdentifier id = (SecurityIdentifier)acct.Translate(typeof(SecurityIdentifier));

        bRet = id.IsAccountSid();
    }
    catch (IdentityNotMappedException)
    {
        /* Invalid user account */
    }

    return bRet;
}

Now getting group membership is slightly harder, you can easily do it for the current user using the WindowsPrinciple.IsInRole method (creating a principle from the WindowsIdentify.GetCurrent() method).

As pointed out I don't think there is a way of getting anything else without resorting to PInvoke or WMI. So here is a bit of code to check group membership with WMI.

bool IsUserInGroup(string name, string group)
{
    bool bRet = false;
    ObjectQuery query = new ObjectQuery(String.Format("SELECT * FROM Win32_UserAccount WHERE Name='{0}' AND LocalAccount=True", name));
    ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(query);
    ManagementObjectCollection objs = searcher.Get();

    foreach (ManagementObject o in objs)
    {
        ManagementObjectCollection coll = o.GetRelated("Win32_Group");
        foreach (ManagementObject g in coll)
        {
            bool local = (bool)g["LocalAccount"];
            string groupName = (string)g["Name"];

            if (local && groupName.Equals(group, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
            {
                bRet = true;
                break;
            }
        }
    }           

    return bRet;
}

Answer 2

I have tried the following code and is working fine for me..

    public bool IsUserMemberOfGroup(string userName, string groupName)
    {
        bool ret = false;

        try
        {
            DirectoryEntry localMachine = new DirectoryEntry("WinNT://" + Environment.MachineName);
            DirectoryEntry userGroup = localMachine.Children.Find(groupName, "group");

            object members = userGroup.Invoke("members", null);
            foreach (object groupMember in (IEnumerable)members)
            {
                DirectoryEntry member = new DirectoryEntry(groupMember);
                if (member.Name.Equals(userName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
                {
                    ret = true;
                   break;
                }
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            ret = false;
        }
        return ret;
    }