Server2003, enable / disable user login via powershell

Question

Hi all,
Newbie, in Africa for short time only and probably haven't done all the homework I should have.
Unix and OO background but just learning powershell.
I need to be able to enable / disable local user accounts on a local server in a school; no clusters, pretty much stand-alone.  I presume if I can get the user object it has a member / method for enabling / disabling, but I don't understand how to get
the user object.  In particular, I don't understand the two-character abbreviations used in front of params to queries.
If I bring up active directory users and computers, what I see is:
techna-school
  Tech/na school
      Students
The users I want to enable/disable are members of the "Students" group above, and for RDP / security purposes are members of the "Learners" group.  The server is not in any "official" (i.e. DNS recognized) domain, just gets
net access as a normal user via dialup and DHCP.
I'm guessing I need something kinda like the following to get at the user objects, but I haven't a clue what the "ou", "dc", or anything else needed are supposed to be as I don't have an MS server background.
$learners = [ADSI] "LDAP://ou=Learners,dc=techna-school"
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Gary

Answer 1

From the sounds of it, you have domain accounts not local accounts. The difference is domain accounts can log onto any machine within your domain, whereas local accounts can only log onto the local machine they where created on. Since your users are using
thin clients, it is most liekly a domain account they are using.
For using AD cmdlets on Server 2003, you need some things in place, this article might help you
Thanks for the info and pointer.
I'm a little leery of going through that process as I don't have a test system to work on, but I appreciate the pointer; may delve into that later.
In the meantime, I've managed to get the user objects using Get-WmiObject, but an attempt to modify them via Set-WmiInstance fails:
    $learners = Get-WmiObject -query "Select Name,Disabled From Win32_UserAccount"
    foreach ($learner in $learners) {
      Set-WmiInstance -InputObject $learner -Argument @{Disabled=$True} -PutType UpdateOnly
Set-WmiInstance : Invalid Object
Seems pretty straight-forward so I suspect it is a simple error but I'm not seeing it.