Create 1hr PC sessions with auto logoff?

[gshaw]

Hi all,

One of our projects for the summer is to install a new Student Work Room where anyone can drop in and use the PCs for projects etc. They'll have to look after their own data as we don't provide individual student accounts (mainly part-time courses so not worth the hassle).

Having thought about what's probably going to happen I'm looking for a way of making sessions that auto log-off \ reboot after, say 1hr so students don't abuse the resource and spend all day in there!

So far I've looked at Windows SteadyState but doesn't seem much use for domained PCs (as ours are) but the idea is along the lines of what I want, a visible timer then auto reboot at the end.

We use autologin on all our Teaching PCs so looking for something that would work with that. Also needs to be free, budgets haven't been kind to us this year!

Thanks in advance,

Gerrard Shaw

[altecsole]

How about a script that runs at login that starts a timer. After an hour the user gets logged off?

[gshaw]

OK but how to make it visible with a timer as well? I'm guessing it may be possible to make a popup box with 10, 5 then 1 minute to go via the script?

Any ideas on how to get it to auto log-in again, I know that seems a bit pointless but it's the best we can do really as the room is unsupervised

[altecsole]

As the user will already be logged on you would have to start the timer when an application was started. I'd use something like AutoIT3 to do this. A simple timer could run in the background. Prompt the user when the time is running down, and then reboot the workstation when it runs out.

[zag]

You could also check out some internet cafe admin software, most of them will be designed to run in the same way and many custom applications are sold commercially.

[rodsco]

Maybe too simple but how about just running 'shutdown -r -t 3600' in the login script ?

This will display a windows dialog box with a count down in seconds until reboot.

Also might be worth a look ar PSSHUTDOWN, which offers more configuration options.