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November 10th, 2006 22:00

D620 - How does computrace work?

Purchased several D620's with the 4 year computrace package. I activated it in the bios, but I will be darned if I can find any information on how it works.  Who do I contact if I need to use it?  Is there a serial number I give them (the Dell serial number maybe?)
 
What happens If I reformat the drive to install our preconfigured RIS images?  Does Computrace still stay active since it appears to be completely bios related in the D620?

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July 5th, 2007 02:00

From Personal experience....  The computer must fully boot into the OS (while connected to the internet) at least one time after activating computrace in the bios,. When you do that, it will 1) automatically contact the computrace server and record its IP, serial number ESN etc and 2) permanently load itself into the bios space reserved for it.  After that, whatever happens to the hardrive the agent can reinstall itself and run automatically.
 
If you RIS (as I do) as soon as it comes out of the box, you have to manually install the agent and configure the options, using the downloaded software from their website.  Call their help desk for the first time as it is not intuitive until you do it once or twice
 
Also, I have found out that unlike the Dell Registration (especially if buying through third party vendors ), the computrace registration does not get automatically transferred to you. You will have to call them to get that to happen.. Now that my be becasue I RIS my machines as soon as they come out of the box, but there may be a registration screen that pops up if you OEM boot it
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