Ask the Expert

How can I prevent users from logging off and leaving devices attached?

How can I prevent users from logging off from an XP network and leaving devices attached (i.e. USB Disks or other disks in drives)? I believe it is possible to check on logout and prevent logout until a device has been removed, but I don't know how to do it.

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

One possible way to do this would be to have a script (either a batch file or a WSH file) that runs at logoff, and which checks the number of available drives against a list somewhere. If there are more drives available than normal, the user gets a warning and logoff is aborted.

Apparently Peter Paquette of the University of Washington, Tacoma, has written a script to detect when this sort of thing happens, but it is not available publicly (see http://css.tacoma.washington.edu/~lab/News/articles/LogoffRemMediaNotification.html for more information).

This was first published in February 2005

Join the conversationComment

Share
Comments

    Results

    Contribute to the conversation

    All fields are required. Comments will appear at the bottom of the article.
    Back to top