USB stick reminder

[ascott2]

We have an awful problem here where the kids are constantly forgetting to take out their memory sticks out of the machines. We either, end up with a pile of them in the office or have students running round the school looking for where they left it.

What I have done is created a taskbar application(coded in C#) which monitors on logoff if there is a USB stick plugged in and if there is it pops up a message for a few seconds reminding them to take it. If there isn't the machine will logoff as normal.

We are using it here and seems to be working well. I just wanted to know whether anyone would be interested in using it as I would need to take out the hard coding and create some customisation.

Note: At the moment this only works if your USB sticks are given the same drive letter each time. Here they are. But in time I may change this.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Download from here

[Galway]

All the machines in the school have front USB's, and they are all mapped to the same drive letter ( Drive P ) and yet every day have USB's stuck in the front of computers, even staff are not immune from the rushing out on the bell syndrome.

I was going to look for a script to warn on logoff, but since every class also has a couple of machines stuck at the "Do you want to save X before you logoff" screen might not be worth while.

I will try it if you want and see how it goes.

[ascott2]

...couple of machines stuck at the "Do you want to save X before you logoff" screen might not be worth while.

We have the same issue too. What I have done to prevent that is put in a timer so even if they don't acknowledge the message it will timeout and shutdown in a graceful manner.

[GAS]

Hi ascott2,
if you don’t mind i like to try out that script please.
Ajay

[ascott2]

Hi ascott2,
if you don’t mind i like to try out that script please.
Ajay

Just so people are aware this isnt a script it's an application. When I went down the logoff script route, most of the kids would have walked off by the time the message showed up.

Ajay: Check your PM.

[dalehopper]

yes please

[Geoff]

USB disabled here. I will keep a note of this thread in my 'reasons not to enable usb for kids' pile.

[Hightower]

USB disabled here. I will keep a note of this thread in my 'reasons not to enable usb for kids' pile.

Off topic but how do your kids bring work in/take work home?

[PEO]

kids transfer work via email here or if to large they bring in on usb stick for teacher to transfer over for them

[Hightower]

Seems a bit faffy to me - what if the kids don't have internet access?

[Geoff]

Off topic but how do your kids bring work in/take work home?

In reverse order of preference. They come into the IT Tech Office with a USB stick and we do it for them. Alternatively they can email it to their school email. Or they can transfer it via Moodle/WebDAV.

[Hightower]

It is a good idea Geoff - but we couldn't do it. There's still an aweful lot of kids here that don't have internet access at home, so our time would be taken up by transferring files constantly.

Anyways, back on topic....

[ascott2]

Amended first post with download link

[cromertech]

How have you been deploying this accross your school.

Using USBDLM to ensure that the usb drives always get letter Z: and have a settings file generated from your app.

Thought I would be able to run it at logon but I'm getting a security error of some sort when the students logon. It's fine for my admin logon however.

[ascott2]

How have you been deploying this accross your school.

Using USBDLM to ensure that the usb drives always get letter Z: and have a settings file generated from your app.

Thought I would be able to run it at logon but I'm getting a security error of some sort when the students logon. It's fine for my admin logon however.

Odd never had that before. Yes we rolled it out a couple of weeks ago and not getting any error like that. How are you running at startup? I have created an msi out of mine and added a registry key in HKLM to start it up.