Locking down student laptop

I've had a search of the forums- there doesn't seem to be anything covering this- Hopefully someone can help :)

We've got 25 laptops that are going to live in a trolley for a department to use with the pupils. However, I don't think its a wise idea to leave these unsecured. It wont take long till they just can't be used...
I've had a play with gpedit.msc- while this helps with some stuff, it isnt great.

I dont want to add these laptops to the domain (i tried- it failed- and now i dont have time to play with them. People are moaning).

I've used SteadyState before- It'd be really good if only it worked when ghosting, and if it didnt slow the machines down quite so much!

Anyone got any ideas?

We have over 100 laptops in trolleys all connected to the domain and we use windows disk protection that does the trick for us. but we are looking into steady state

SteadyState is what was on these laptops- however, when imaging with steadystate it goes all funky...just watch out for that :P

Did you haave disk protection turned on?

We have 75+ student laptops all domain connected and wireless as well.

Ben

Well when i try to connect these puppies to the domain they dont pull the users policies... gpupdate /force and the secedit command to reset security settings doesnt help..

I'll try to get one working on the domain while working out another way to lock the laptops down

When you did the image with steady state did you have disk protection turned on?

It was over the summer when I did it. I can't remember if disk protection was on or not- It would make sense for it to not image correctly if it were on.

I'm about to try with steadystate again. I'll post if i have any touble with it- just so you can avoid those mistakes when you get to have fun with laptops.

Well at the moment we dont have any problems with them really so if you could let us know how it goes with steady state it would be helpful.

I was going to say, Steadystate. I only came across it last week, and i've just cloned 4 standalone music PCs with the same setup..identical hardware though, so no syspreping.

God, do the kids give me grief now..."we can't set our own anything!!!"

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Originally Posted by Sirbendy

I was going to say, Steadystate. I only came across it last week, and i've just cloned 4 standalone music PCs with the same setup..identical hardware though, so no syspreping.

God, do the kids give me grief now..."we can't set our own anything!!!"

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i tried to clone a steadystate pc and when it gets to the fus logon there are no accounts visible!.

That's odd...was the source PC definetly showing them? I set ours to not show "Administrator", or "ICT"..all they see is "Music Student" unless they hit CTRL-ALT-DEL twice and type it in..

It definetly worked in the test VMs...I'll recheck on Monday though..

Funny this should come up, i was talking about something similar with another forum member in e-mail i have but what was said below.

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The CLC have loaned the school 30 dell laptops 15 for maths and 15 for English, before i got there. I was asked to take a look at one because it wasn't working properly. I got there and 9 of the English ones have had keys pulled of and one with a sticker in the screen and the track pad.

The students had been using them unsupervised, the teachers wont take any responsibility so they all all staying in our office now and they have to come to us to use them and we will check them etc.

Out of curiosity i went up to maths to take a look at the other 15 and they are in perfect condition all locked up and away. I just go's to show how the teachers don't look after things.

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You need to make sure the department physically looks after the laptops.

Z

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Originally Posted by strawberry

Ii tried to clone a steadystate pc and when it gets to the first logon there are no accounts visible!.

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I had exactly the same error with a steady state machine. It can also happen after windows update. Steady state disables the users as a sort of suspend mode to let the update happen. If you go look at your local users you'll see them disabled & re-named. Certain circumstances can cause the process to break, leaving you with no users - apparently. Just go in as admin and re-enable then. None of their profiles are touched.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sirbendy

That's odd...was the source PC definetly showing them? I set ours to not show "Administrator", or "ICT"..all they see is "Music Student" unless they hit CTRL-ALT-DEL twice and type it in..

It definetly worked in the test VMs...I'll recheck on Monday though..

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showed up for first boot. then nowt on second.