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XPS2 stolen, 8B97T71 Eugene Oregon, anything I can do? - Page 2

post #21 of 58
9/12/05 at 8:55pm
Was the backpack stolen aswell? Cuz I say someone was watching you like a hawk from the corner of the eye. Perhaps this person frequents about you?
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post #22 of 58
9/12/05 at 9:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by odious_m
And which fine print are you referring to, oh knowledgeable one of the ALL CAPS? This fine print, perhaps?

"My laptop was only four days old when it was stolen from my home office. Fortunately it was protected with LoJack for Laptops. Three weeks after it was stolen, the Absolute Recovery Team tracked it down and then worked with the police to recover my computer. Boy, was that money well spent!"
-Dr. Mark LaPorta, My Medical Advocate, North Miami, Florida

or this....

"Last month, for instance, a distress call came from a laptop in McKinney, Texas. The local police stumbled onto a big chop-shop location with drugs and weapons. They also got the stolen computer back."

or....

"LoJack even offers a $1,000 recovery guarantee for your machine."

http://www.lojackforlaptops.com/defa...eula=true&g=mb
http://www.forbes.com/technology/200...ml?partner=rss
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000667048527/
thats not fine print...
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post #23 of 58
9/12/05 at 10:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toy-Yoda
thats not fine print...
On my WUXGA, it is.
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post #24 of 58
9/12/05 at 10:10pm
Ok ok I'll give his laptop back.
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post #25 of 58
9/13/05 at 4:02am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by SSJiffy
Was the backpack stolen aswell? Cuz I say someone was watching you like a hawk from the corner of the eye. Perhaps this person frequents about you?
Yeah, they took the whole thing.

Checked with the card I used to buy it, no theft protection. Wasn't at home, Allstate says get bent for homeowners insurance.

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post #26 of 58
9/13/05 at 12:00pm
I hate people that do this. You know what would be a good 'trick'. Since most thieves (or at least many) are into drugs, get one of those little brown vials and fill it with powdered drain cleaner and just leave it in your laptop bag. Thief might think he found a little 'bonus' and wind up with sinuses full of drain cleaner.

Unfortunately, that really doesn't help with your current situation though. Did you really have the only i9kfangui source code on there or was it backed up somewhere? Sort of makes me 'rethink' my backup procedures...I have a 256mb SD card that I permenantly keep in the SD slot and use that to back up source code, quicken files and other important docs. If I lose the whole laptop that would be gone too...think I better start using something removable.
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post #27 of 58
9/13/05 at 12:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by odious_m
On my WUXGA, it is.
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post #28 of 58
9/13/05 at 12:32pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by johare
Did you really have the only i9kfangui source code on there or was it backed up somewhere? Sort of makes me 'rethink' my backup procedures...I have a 256mb SD card that I permenantly keep in the SD slot and use that to back up source code, quicken files and other important docs. If I lose the whole laptop that would be gone too...think I better start using something removable.
Yeah, DVD-RW with the last 3 versions sounded like a good idea at the time, offsite backups should have been done, I know. I've got some older source that I can revert to, thanks to gmail, but I'll have to redo alot of the stuff i've already done.
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post #29 of 58
9/13/05 at 12:40pm
Your loss is terrible and represents a pretty scary thought. As a generally broke @$$ college student this laptop embodies almost a month of banging away as a lowly intern. The idea of having it stolen by some dumb little butt-wipe is both disturbing and infuriating. I'll have to make sure to take extra precautions before moving back into the dorms next week.
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post #30 of 58
9/13/05 at 12:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by spudsdude
Wasn't at home, Allstate says get bent for homeowners insurance.
That sucks. I had a laptop stolen at a Secaucus, NJ hotel back in May. My homeowners insurance covered it. I'm with Geico who then went through Traveler's Idemnity. It's a good idea to put a specific rider on the valuable stuff, like a laptop. My coverage was for up to $2000, so it worked out perfectly. I'm sorry to hear of your loss.

Quote:
Originally Posted by johare
Sort of makes me 'rethink' my backup procedures...I have a 256mb SD card that I permenantly keep in the SD slot and use that to back up source code, quicken files and other important docs. If I lose the whole laptop that would be gone too...think I better start using something removable.
When mine was stolen, I had a thumbdrive I was using for backup that was in the bag. Fortunately, I had recently upgraded my hard drive, so as soon as I got a 2.5" enclosure, I could access all the stuff on my old drive (although it was like a month old).

Take a look on e-bay and maybe call around to some pawn shops. You never know what you may find!
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post #31 of 58
9/13/05 at 1:24pm
Are there any "Identifying marks" on the chassis that might give it away in ebay auction photos?
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post #32 of 58
9/13/05 at 1:38pm
sorry to stray off topic a little and I hope you find your laptop, but doesn't lojack have protection against a hard disk change? I'm sure I read in some review that it also stores info on the motherboard... if that's not the case, I'm probably not gonna buy it as I'm sure most thieves are wise to it (or will be at some point in the 3 years of subscription)
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post #33 of 58
9/13/05 at 4:19pm
How to beat Computrace:

- Yank out the hard drive and plug in a new one, reinstall windows. Gee, they're really gonna be able to trace that.

- Reformat before letting Windows load. How is software going to work when the drive housing it has been zeroed?

Granted, this is for someone who knows what they're doing - but still...
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post #34 of 58
9/13/05 at 7:57pm
You should have just told them it was stolen out of your vehicle that was parked in your driveway. Then you would be getting a new laptop.
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post #35 of 58
9/13/05 at 8:35pm
Yea....there's no way that software writes anything to the bios....how could they possibly keep track of all the bioses out there for all the laptops?...checksum errors ring in my ears...plus even if someway somehow it did do that, it would be really obnoxious to install, requiring boot disks etc. to all those who said a re-format would kill that program's usefulness, they are 100% right...however...a thief smart enough to re-format a computer before even turning it on...wouldn't you think he'd go after bigger game? just a thought
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post #36 of 58
9/13/05 at 10:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by andrewb6k

...... doesn't lojack have protection against a hard disk change? I'm sure I read in some review that it also stores info on the motherboard...
You are correct, sir.

Quote:
Originally Posted by destruya
How to beat Computrace:

- Yank out the hard drive and plug in a new one, reinstall windows. Gee, they're really gonna be able to trace that.

- Reformat before letting Windows load. How is software going to work when the drive housing it has been zeroed?
Wrong answer!

Quote:
Originally Posted by kdawg31337
Yea....there's no way that software writes anything to the bios......
Wrong as well.
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post #37 of 58
9/13/05 at 10:32pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nokinja
Are there any "Identifying marks" on the chassis that might give it away in ebay auction photos?
Just looks like the standard XPS2, only thing that would give it away would be if they took a picture of the bottom with the service tag.
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post #38 of 58
9/14/05 at 12:57am
I have all my physical ip addresses written down and stored in a safe place. the physical address cannot be changed unless you remove the network card. I Don't know how I personally would be able to find the location of a physical address but I do know that any ISP can obtain the physical address of the network card during the "Handshake" stage of connecting to the internet and can also obtain a number that the card is connnecting from. of course that only works for dialsuck and situations where the laptop is directly hooked up to a cable modem with no router inbetween.

it's as easy as opening the command line and typing ipconfig /all and then just write all the hexadecimal numbers down.
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post #39 of 58
9/14/05 at 11:49am
Dell will be releasing a BIOS version of the Computrace product here in the near term and that means...

It will survive ANY kind of reformat
it will also survive a hard drive swap.

THe BIOS enabled component serves to rebuild the software tracking agent in the case of a reformat or hard drive swap. I don't have any dates because they have not released them yet, but it will likely cover all Inspirons and Latitudes
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post #40 of 58
9/14/05 at 12:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ozzlo
I have all my physical ip addresses written down and stored in a safe place. the physical address cannot be changed unless you remove the network card. I Don't know how I personally would be able to find the location of a physical address but I do know that any ISP can obtain the physical address of the network card during the "Handshake" stage of connecting to the internet and can also obtain a number that the card is connnecting from. of course that only works for dialsuck and situations where the laptop is directly hooked up to a cable modem with no router inbetween.

it's as easy as opening the command line and typing ipconfig /all and then just write all the hexadecimal numbers down.
Errr you do realise that all ip settings can be changed in windows in network settings right? No need to remove anything in fact you can change IP without even rebooting. You may be thinking of MAC address which can't be changed so easily but that isn't shown in ipconfig so you are writing down the wrong data (MAC address can be found in the config pages of both the wireless settings and wired network settings and each has a different MAC address)

Edit nevermind didn't realise it does give MAC address with the /all switch ignore what I said

I would point out though that generally most ISPs don't see the MAC address of the card in your computer but instead see the MAC address of the router or modem since that is the device connecting to them so the MAC address can't really be used to track down stolen laptops in that way, it could be used to track stolen laptops using wireless hotspots but the logistics of doing so make it impossible.
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