I've got a user who's just returned from China, where he was staying in a hotel in Beijing (Peking for you oldtimers...yar!). So he gets to the hotel on the 3rd, boots up our company laptop (a loaner) after hooking it up to their ethernet. And he describes the computer going thru the bootup process normally, but then getting a 'purple' login screen before he gets the standard Ctrl-Alt-Del Windows login (this is an old W2K unit, joined to our domain). And he has to enter his name and room number before he gets to the computer/domain login. Now, he only does this once during his stay. They do this apparently to bill his time on the 'net.

How did this Chinese hotel do this, and what did they do to our loaner? I've yet to really pore over it. I've debriefed the user several times today and may add some notes to this post yet. I know the user fairly well and he is tech savvy. I'm VERY surprised someone could pull off an 'interdiction' in the Windows boot process as he describes. Any clues appreciated.