Logon Tracking

[dkel22]

A friend and I have been building and selling laptops on the side and have come across some money situations. We have been running into people who aren't paying for the laptops at the agreed times and want to establish a fail proof method for ourselves. Basically, we want to somehow (easiest method best) be able to limit user logons for a certain time period or certain number of logons that when they reach the limit it will prompt for a password or something of that nature. Thus, if they do not pay they don't get the access information and they can no longer log onto the Laptop. Does anyone know a simple file we can create or any programming we can do to ensure that are clients have limited logon time, that requires info from us to ensure permanent usage, thus making sure we get paid?

 

[tfg13]

Depending on how you set these PC's up, you could effectively use the "user cannot change password" (User management) and password expires X amount of days (from the local policy). This would be good if the users are just that and not administrators.

 

[arevaloj]

Hmmm, if you are selling laptops then when they own it, they can install any OS. So unless you provide an image and prevent them from changing/installing something else, you're best bet for money issues is going through a collection agency.

 

[Stevehewitt]

Something like what tfg13 mentioned and locking the BIOS after you've set it to use local disk as default boot device.

Maybe your into programming or something? Little lightweight .exe that will countdown from a timer you set. After that timer expires then it will only allow users to logon for 5 minutes - after that it logs off.

(If the people aren't too bright then setup a script that uses shutdown.exe in windows. Setup the schedule by the AT command and that may help too)

Or bite the bullet at pay for a thrid party solution?