Company computer utilization?

[Joffre Heredia]

 I would set the default boot partition to linux and then install a
scheduler for windows that reboots the computer at a late hour (lets say 21.00).
This will automatically start linux at night.

There are freeware and shareware schedulers for windows that you can use.
Just take a look at google.

 About booting windows early at morning, lets say 07.00, you just have to
set a crontab entry in /etc/crontab. To start windows you have two
options: 1. manually: You can make the computer going off with a simple
shutdown and then tell the users to type 'windows' at the boot prompt when
they arrive at work and power on their computers. 2. automatically: Make a
script to execute a "lilo -R windows" before shutting the computer down
(man lilo for help). This will load windows ONLY next time.

 Anyway, this solution is going to load linux by default, what could be an
undesired option.

 I think there are some windows programs out there that will allow you to
reboot your computer using a different boot partition. Maybe Partition
Manager allows it. I dont know. But you can check it out. If thats the
case, you could set the default partition to be windows, so if the user
get one of these common blue screens and reboots the computer, it would
come back to windows. If you set the scheduler in windows to change the
default boot partition to linux at 21.00 (just like the linux 'lilo -R'),
you will get linux every time you reboot from 21.00 to 07.00.

 Well i know it was not much clear, so if you have questions just write me
an email.

 good luck!

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Joffre Heredia Rodrigo                  Tel: (34)-93-5813812
Laboratory of Computational Medicine    Fax: (34)-93-5812344
Biostatistic Dept.
UAB School of Medicine. Bellaterra      Joffre.Heredia at uab.es
08193-Barcelona (SPAIN)
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