Creating and using a USB Key...

[eagle4life69]

So I don't know what it would be called or how I can implement it and I figured who better to ask to point me in the right direction.

this is what I want to do.

We have laptops Docked inside our cars and have some car-specific information like vehicle # and Call Sign.

what I would love to do is have something on a hidden USB that has a file with the correct information for the car that is on the dock so no matter what Laptop is docked the correct information is read and it knows the Vehicle ID and other information needed.

 

If somehow it could autorun when docked with no user input that would be great...

 

what is this called and how can I get this done. Point me in the right direction and I can get coding

 

thanks

[JLogan3o13]

@eagle4life69 can you explain what you mean by "hidden usb"? Do your laptops have internal usb ports under the cover that you're planning to plug into? Or do you simply mean a hidden executable on the laptop itself? Whether or not you can autorun this script will greatly depend on your answer to the above.

[eagle4life69]

@JLogan3o13 So after doing some research I think I want to create a USB Dongle that allows me to hold information in it so I can know the vehicle the Laptop is docked into. we have Dispatching software on the Laptop and a vehicle checkout sheet for our users to let us know if there are any issues with the vehicle.

The only custom information on the Laptop is for these 2 programs and we want users to be able to pull the Laptop out of one car and into another without needing to be reprogrammed.

 

hope this makes it more clear on what I am looking to do

[JLogan3o13]

@eagle4life69 It does make things a bit clearer. A couple thoughts I have on this are below, just my 2¢ from past experience. Others may wander by to offer some alternatives:

• USB Autoplay - As you are no doubt aware, this is disabled by default in modern Windows as it is a security risk. Enabling it for all USB drives to accommodate what you're trying to do opens you to a host of vulnerabilities. 
  • I would first look into using Group Policy (or Local Policy if absolutely necessary ) to restrict USB drives to only those your company approves
    • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731387.aspx
  • You can then configure AutoRun policy for the USB drives:
    • I can't find a more recent link, but the settings are under  Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Autoplay Policies

Once you have this worked out, the actual configuration of a script to manage the vehicle information should be decidedly easy.

[eagle4life69]

Yeah, Autoplay would be out, my goal is to have my program launch the other programs and it would take the information from the dongle and input it into the correct file locations for each program. Now I need to figure out how to create the dongles and hold the required information

 

[JLogan3o13]

Again speaking from experience, you can probably cobble something together, but nothing that won't be overcome pretty quickly by someone with an hour to spend on it. If you're going to go the hardware dongle route you really should convince your management to reach out to a 3rd party company that makes custom devices of that nature.

[Danp2]

Do the docking stations have USB ports? If so, then the "key" could be installed in each dock and then you could have a job that runs automatically each time the user docks or undocks the laptop.

[eagle4life69]

@Danp2 that's exactly what we are looking to do when they dock it runs and basically reprograms parts of the Laptop that hold the who am I information

@JLogan3o13 I need to build the proof of concept to demonstrate to those who have control of the budget. Once I get it built I can then order the things I will need to push it out to our 600+ fleet

[anthonyjr2]

If you want that to happen automatically then you would probably have to enable AutoPlay in the steps that Jlogan described. Most of the stuff you want seems to me like it could be done in AutoIt, but getting the program to automatically run may be the more complicated part.

[Danp2]

Another possibility is check if an event is created in the system logs each time the laptop is docked. If so, you could create a task in Task Scheduler that would monitor for this event and then kick off the appropriate task.