How do Dells know that the cover has previously been removed?

[psteng19]

For those that have opened up a Dell case, you know that on your next boot up, it tells you:
Warning! Cover previously removed! (or somethign like that).

I didn't really examine the case that much, but how does it know that?
And when will that prompt go away?

 

[Ipno]

There's a little trigger inside the case that trips if you open the case.

You can go into the bios and reset the trigger.

 

[MikeMike]

mine has never said that to me maybe only on older cases?

 

[Whitedog]

It's a little switch on the edge of the case where the cover fits on. You can go into the bios and tell it to "disable" case intrusion warnings so you won't see that any more.

I've seen some people just clip the wires and twist them together. LOL

 

[chizow]

Yah, its not a feature exclusive to Dell's, my A7N8X-DLX has intrusion detection too. Figured it was for paranoid uber geeks at LAN parties or something

Chiz

 

[Ipno]

Actually sysadmins can make it so that the system will tell them if a user is trying to get into their system on the network. Theft/Configration change prevention if you will. You can set it up so you get an alarm if a computer is unplugged from the network or opened at all. That was the point of the thing really.

But for an end user, yeah its pretty worthless. Unless you don't trust your kids.