Personal Laptop Problems

[Steve_Needham]

Hi,

I apologise now if this has been asked in previous posts.
Occasionally we get students calling to our office with their own personal laptops asking if we can remove a virus or just fix them.
How do you deal with this, do you fix them or do you explain that you can't work on their personal laptops.

In the near future we hope to move to open access where students can use their own laptops in school. If you already provide this facility are you expected to fix any issues they have with their personal machines.

Thanks in Advance

[pantscat]

It's quite simple... no support for 3rd party devices.

[FN-GM]

I will give some advice but not touch them. If i break all sorts of problems will happen.

[themightymrp]

I echo that, we will advise them on courses of action ie. virus removal tools etc, but we try not to actually do it ourselves. You could write up some kind of agreement that they would have to sign if you did want to provide support for student machines? You could add into that something that states you would like your schools anti-virus to be on the laptops before you allow them to join the domain? This way at least you don't allow potentially unsafe machines into your network.

[3s-gtech]

Most school anti-virus is neither licenced for use on personal machines, nor easily deployable to them. Have a recommended AV supplier you can give them, like MSE, Avast etc, and maybe a recommended place for them to take the PCs to be fixed. Personally, I won't touch them for the reasons outlined above.

[themightymrp]

This is true but our service provider allows us to distribute a version of their AV to staff and students of the school, provided the user is on our books so-to-speak. As I said before, we still don't actually touch them ourselves. Just advise.

[EvLPhenom]

Same as above. If they have a problem with their personal computers we will advise them on action to take and what software to use but won't touch the machines at all, there's just too many implications if it breaks completely whilst you are "fixing" it.

[timzim]

Plus a whole lot of issues occur when you have access to staff/students' personal stuff. Here's an example: you take in a staff member's personal laptop to fix and, in the course of your investigation into the problem, come across a whole stash of underage (or otherwise) porn in a hidden folder. What are your legal responsibilities and what are the implications for you if you either act on this (i.e. report it to the police) or ignore it? What if you act on it and they then turn round and say you who planted it there? Or what if it's their husband/wife/son's porn collection? You can add your own what-ifs...

It's a whole nest of vipers - don't go there.

[rad]

I'd echo the above.

i have never had a student bring their PC, I have had staff ones, but try not to get my hands mucky sorting them out.

[DAZZD88]

I have only once do something on a student's with his laptop and that's because he's from a poor background and his enthiusiasm to get stuck into computers is held back only by that. Otherwise, I refuse point blank to work on a student's computer but I still advise where I can. You might think this is double standards but at the time I wanted to try and give the enthiusiastic pupil a helping hand as I believe he may well be some kind of genius...maybe.

[powdarrmonkey]

I'm quite happy to advise at arms length, but under no circumstances would I touch a machine not wholly owned by the school.

[strawberry]

Best thing to do is arrange a referral scheme with a decent local shop. There is simply no benefit to you for doing the work, you could very easily end up in all sorts of bother.