Pupils Leaving laptops On

[Scorpio]

Hi All

 

We have an issue at one of the schools we manage, the pupils are leaving the laptops logged in, closing the lids and putting them in the trolley, the next day they are being used, pupils are then either faced with a logon box for the user from the previous day or straight in. We have turned off Hibernation and standy on them, and was wondering if we set logon hours along with the policy:

 

Force logoff when logon hours expire

 

 

Would this work, that way the laptops would just logoff and the preset logon hours.

 

 

Is there a better solution that would log them off and shut them down as we obviously dont want them running overnight, is thee anything that would shut tem down remotely, as now we have turned off standy and hibernation, they will be online.

 

 

An pointers to what you do would be great.

 

Cheers

[mattx]

There should be an option to power the laptop down when the lid is closed...........

Either that or use a psshutdown script at a set time - [ I have one which runs every evening which shuts down left on kit ]

[kmount]

I'm fairly sure there's a GPO you can set which will shut the laptop down when you close the lid.

[powdarrmonkey]

I'm fairly sure there's a GPO you can set which will shut the laptop down when you close the lid.

 

Not without group policy preference extensions (and I'm not sure even then).

 

You could configure the power on each one to shutdown when the lid is closed, but you risk really hacking off your users. You could prevent standby or hibernation so the machine is awake and employ Shutdownertron instead.

[Cools]

i set a shedual on the laptops 5 mins after school has ended do forced shutdown.

enable wake up if in standby... i have 2008 server so i set it in GPO.

 

it works great.

[User3204]

We have a "screensaver" set on the staff machines called "win exit" that logs them off after a short time. Not sure where it came from, probably somewhere on this site. This is in comparison to the staff laptops that I do a force lock screensaver after being left too long (which really annoys them, but tough).

[maniac]

With a registry hack, it's possible to change the power options to only turn the screen off when the lid is closed and not put the laptop into standby mode.

 

We then use the fog client on our network, which logs the user off after 30 mins of inactivity and closes the machines down automatically at 6:00pm in our school. If you don't have FOG, it is possible to add a simple scheduled task using a startup script which will call the shutdown command at whatever time you want, I did this at a previous school and it worked well.

 

Mike.

[Scorpio]

Just to follow up incase anyone else needs info, we used the Winexit screensaver to log off after 30 mins of inactivity, which we controlled by the following GPO:

 

CLASS USER

CATEGORY !!AdditionalSettings

CATEGORY !!Desktop

  CATEGORY !!WinExitScr
    KEYNAME "Control Panel\Screen Saver.Logoff"
    POLICY !!ForceLogoff
      VALUENAME ForceLogoff
      VALUEON "1" 
       VALUEOFF "0"
    END POLICY
    POLICY !!CountDownTimer
      PART !!WarningTime TEXT END PART
      PART " " NUMERIC TXTCONVERT REQUIRED 
         MIN 0 MAX 900 SPIN 60
        VALUENAME CountDownTimer
        DEFAULT "300"
      END PART
    END POLICY

    POLICY !!DialogMessage
      PART !!Message TEXT END PART
      PART " "
        EDITTEXT
        DEFAULT !!DefaultMessage
        VALUENAME DialogMessage
      END PART
    END POLICY

  END CATEGORY ; !!WinExitScr

END CATEGORY ; !!Desktop

END CATEGORY ; !!AdditionalSettings

[strings]
Desktop=Desktop
AdditionalSettings=Additional settings
WinExitScr=Settings for WinExit screen saver
ForceLogoff=Force running applications to close
CountDownTimer=Warn before logoff
WarningTime=Seconds to warn before logoff:
DialogMessage=Display message before logoff
Message=Message:
DefaultMessage=You will be logged off. Press cancel to abort.

 

 

 

Then we turned off Hibernation and Standby and used shutdownertron, works great!

[maniac]

Rather than finding a solution, how about using education?

 

Make sure the pupils know to shut them down before closing the lids and putting them in the trolley.

 

If they continue to ignore it, note down the username of the last operator and take their internet privs away for a week!

 

My how I'd love to do that, but internet access is seen as more of a 'right' than a 'priveledge' as is access to a computer to start with, so no banning in this school.

 

We do try and educate them to do this, and also educate the staff to check them before they let the students go, but it rarely happens. There are one or two departments who are excellent at this, but some of them are very poor at looking after equipment - mainly happens when we have cover teachers taking the lessons it has to be said.

 

Mike.