I received a free computer from our district's robot engineering program. I'm suspicious of its trustworthiness. Is there any way to untap it, or should I just give it up?
I received a free computer from our district's robot engineering program. I'm suspicious of its trustworthiness. Is there any way to untap it, or should I just give it up?
Usually just wiping it and reinstalling the system is enough, but at least here the computers they give out have TPM chips (used as a theft deterrent to lock the computer after a theft). In older computers here you could just pluck it out (don't try that) or unlock it with some tampering
Just use darik's boot and nuke then install OS.
You maybe could boot to an external Linux medium like on a flash drive.
Probably the easiest thing for you to do is to install a firewall where you are notified and have to approve every outbound connection. That will tell you what is on there and what to target.
Of course, you could just take a scorched earth approach: Nuke the hard drive, install OS of your choice, software of your choice, and never worry about it again.
If they have theft deterence turned on, baked into the hardware, then the first time you connect to the internet with an unrecognized configuration, it's going to phone home and report itself as stolen.
so you need to check into this.
At least at the school I worked at, I used mdm to enfore re enrollment after OS restore on the chrome books, so if it’s one of those switch to a different os and you are good.
I'd be happy to help. What's the brand, OS and model number? Are you ok with opening it up?
If they're up to something its 90% software. Let's go Linux.