Power cable removal disrupts group policy

[Cardygan_Man]

Not sure if this is the correct forum but trying to find a solution to a current trend of student behavior:

 

Some students have discovered that briefly pulling the mains lead from the PC when logged on, then immediately logging back on gives them access to a number of settings etc which are normally blocked by Group Policy. It seems to relate in some way to cached profiles, but we created a vb script that removed all but the adminstrators etc profiles from c:\users (run on machine startup) which seemed initially to stop the behavior, but it has returned. As a result we are suffering from an increasing number of hardware failures due to this activity.

 

Anyone seen this before or got a solution? (Currently trying GPO refresh policy set to 1 minute but this is not generally recommended as it increases network traffic and I'm not yet sure it will make any difference).

[fairm010]

There is a GPO, Always wait for the network at startup, that should stop this.

 

TO be honest, this is also a behavioural issue. I'd be having words with SLT if this occurred in my school, outlining how much it is likely to cost in replacement PSUs.

[sted]

just spitballing but create a hidden network share somewhere. Create a logon script that when a user logs on it creates a %username%.txt file if one dosent exist if it does it runs shutdown /l to log them off and then create a logoff script that at proper logoff deletes the file enabling them to log on again

 

as above havnt tried it its just an idea

 

so

 

if exists \\server\logons$\%username%.txt goto ohdear

copy \\server\logons$\template.txt \\server\logons$\%username%.txt /y

goto end

 

: ohdear

shutdown /l

:end

[Blue_Cookeh]

Isn't pulling the power cables out more of a "class control" issue?

[Cardygan_Man]

Agree entirely that is is a behavioural issue, but in order to reduce the impact, I need to try plug the loop hole so that the students stop trying.

[mowgli82]

I've heard of the GPO restrictions not applying when students disconnect the LAN after authentication but not the powercable :o/

[Cardygan_Man]

I think we took steps to resolve the network cable removal back in our XP setup and I think we migrated whatever GP settings we used for that.

[Muz]

This can most likely be resolved by the "wait for network at startup / login" as mentioned above, this is something I used to take advantage off when I was a Secondary School student many years ago..