Stolen DVD Drive

By dnichols85
in Microsoft (Windows)

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Neowinian

Digital Rage

Posted
Posted
You obviously don't watch much news. Perhaps this is an inner-city school.

Most schools I have done work in have CCTV outside the building, in the cafeterias and usually pointing at the doors accessing the computer labs. I haven't seen one inside the classroom though.

There's going to be no record of when or who removed the drive. The best thing you could do is set an example. Remove all the drives and explain to each class as to why the privilege was removed. Perhaps an witness to the theft will come forward.

One thing I've failed to see mentioned here. CCTV cameras don't mean much. My apartment has them on every floor and where I work has at least 15 (that I have counted) in the building. The problem is the storage required for these systems. I know at work they don't store more than 3 days because of the space required. My apartment only stores about 2 days of video for the same reason. Not sure if it's even worth the time to try and investigate for what is probably only a $15 part these days. Guess it depends on what your time is worth. My high school learned quite quickly that optical drives were pointless to install as they failed rather quickly due to the abuse they took. Finally they got smart and ran most things from the server over the network. I'm not trying to say that you just ignore theft from your computer labs but if you want to discourage it you need to look into better solutions (locking cases, Citrix servers, dedicated CCTV system for that lab....). Don't rely on and event log as it can be misleading. People do forget to logout. Seeing who the last user on may not necessarily be the user that did the crime. Event logs can also be forged so I seriously wouldn't rely on it. Rather than waste time and money trying to figure out who did it I'd suggest redirecting that time and money into a better way to control and monitor that computer lab. In the long run it would probably save you money and headache.

  • 3 weeks later...
Proficient

MagicMan

Posted
Posted
All of the gangs are moving over to the Porter County because they don't like what they did to Gary. Schools are getting really bad in my area.

Up until I read that, I thought "I blame Gary" was refering to a person. I thought it was a tad harsh blaming one guy!

Grand Master

JMann Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

What's the naming convention on the network? If users are logging in as themselves or a unique ID, you can check the Security logs for the last time someone logged in since the drive has gone (you should see them logging on, or shutting down the computer).

Proficient

Madoshi

Posted
Posted
What's the naming convention on the network? If users are logging in as themselves or a unique ID, you can check the Security logs for the last time someone logged in since the drive has gone (you should see them logging on, or shutting down the computer).

whos to say the machine wasn't used afterwards?

my old school had a Novell network, XP Pro VLK clients, and 70% of the library's DVD/CD-RW drives busted. i noticed that the sysop there had replaced a few of them with old CD-ROMs but i think she gave up.

there is a security camera in the lobby, thats about it. i think i nabbed about 15 XP Pro COAs AND the volume license key they were using. (i am not as innocent as i may lead people to believe :()

about the DVD being important: if it was in a classroom, where the teacher made use of a CD-based teaching materials, i could see it being important. or in a library of a school who's Spanish course passes out DVDs to every student taking Spanish. the drives become very important and teachers/students get pretty tense when they can't do what they want when they want to.

$15 isn't alot, but say you have that happen to 10 machines. thats $150 + time to obtain and install the replacement. on top of whatever else the little ******* did.

  • 3 weeks later...
Neowinian

Digital Rage

Posted
Posted
whos to say the machine wasn't used afterwards?

my old school had a Novell network, XP Pro VLK clients, and 70% of the library's DVD/CD-RW drives busted. i noticed that the sysop there had replaced a few of them with old CD-ROMs but i think she gave up.

there is a security camera in the lobby, thats about it. i think i nabbed about 15 XP Pro COAs AND the volume license key they were using. (i am not as innocent as i may lead people to believe :()

about the DVD being important: if it was in a classroom, where the teacher made use of a CD-based teaching materials, i could see it being important. or in a library of a school who's Spanish course passes out DVDs to every student taking Spanish. the drives become very important and teachers/students get pretty tense when they can't do what they want when they want to.

$15 isn't alot, but say you have that happen to 10 machines. thats $150 + time to obtain and install the replacement. on top of whatever else the little ******* did.

OK again I hate to say it but your fighting a loosing battle. I'm sorry JMann but you obviously haven't dealt with network or even machine security before. Simply looking at who the last user was in no way means that's who swiped the drive. All it takes is someone to come in, power off the system, yank the drive and your gone. Anyone with a working brain would know that and also know there is no way to track it by relying on system logs. The only possible useful info those may tell you is approx what time the device went missing and that's only providing they weren't smart enough to get into the BIOS and muck with the system time. Now this small problem aside...

Are you guys seriously running full systems where anyone can install anything and royally muck up the machine? Then you have to pay a tech (In my experience even so called computer teachers are by no means techs) to fix/reinstall the system..??? Honestly. Get rid of the CD/DVD ROM drives as they are not neaded, give each student a bit of storage on the server and a floppy drive if they want to take things home, and make the systems thin clients. Less headache. If you MUST have an HD with programs installed on each system look into something (it's a bit old but think it's still around) like Deep Freeze (Microsoft makes their own clone of it called Steady State). I haven't yet had the chance to play with Steady State but from what I hear Deep Freeze is still at current better. Heck even Citrix could be a solution to look at. Please tell me you never went with LCD screens but the old CRT as they take WAY more of a beating then the LCD ones. :)

ttyl

Digital

Neowinian

Digital Rage

Posted
Posted
This is why we have removed all cd rom drives from the place of work, and installed cameras in all the labs........

You will be surprised what kids steal!!

Oh I know. Remember when all you pretty much had were the mice with the balls in them? I've seen kids even steal those (the ball out of the mouse). What the heck they would want those for is beyond me.

Grand Master

SirEvan

Posted
Posted

try going to eventvwr, looking at system log, and then filtering by "cdrom" not sure if it will work...I just tried it, and no results came back....but then again I haven't taken my bluray drive out either.

Grand Master

fhpuqrgrpgvirzhpujbj

Posted
Posted
try going to eventvwr, looking at system log, and then filtering by "cdrom" not sure if it will work...I just tried it, and no results came back....but then again I haven't taken my bluray drive out either.

It's not likely to show up if you filter it by cdrom.

Grand Master

acnpt

Posted
Posted
Oh I know. Remember when all you pretty much had were the mice with the balls in them? I've seen kids even steal those (the ball out of the mouse). What the heck they would want those for is beyond me.

Try and bounce it around, throw it, play football with it. The kids were probably just bored.

A lot of Sysadmins used to glue the twisty bit to stop it happening :laugh:

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