Instructions:
Start Blue Lock, and after about half a minute a list of discovered Bluetooth devices will be displayed in the window on the right of the screen. Click on a device (you may have to wait a while as the GUI is frozen whilst the Bluetooth driver is scanning for devices - increase the timeout to increase the chances of discovering your device) and its ID and hardware address will be copied to the "Lock Device" field at the bottom of the screen. The program will now loop continuously, and if that device is not detected the system will immediately lock up. The default locking mechanism is a standard Windows API call and is perfectly safe, it's just the same as if you locked the system with CTRL-ALT-DEL. There is an alternative locking mechanism which is documented below. Note that many Bluetooth devices have a long range and therefore it may still detect your device even if you are the other end of the office! I was hoping it would be possible to detect signal strength but this doesn't seem possible :-(
Configuration:
It is possible to reconfigure the default settings by editing bluelock.conf, see the comments in the file for details.
Blue Lock can also be configured to launch an external program when it locks your system, e.g. to delete those incriminating files ;-) ... simply edit the property launchOnLock in bluelock.conf.
Different locking mechanisms
By default, when the application locks your system it uses a standard Windows function which is exactly the same as if you pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL and selected "Lock Computer". However, this requires you to enter your Windows password in order to unlock the system. A couple of users asked me if it would be possible to automatically unlock the system when your Bluetooth device came back into range, but unfortunately it isn't possible to unlock the system as Windows requires you to enter your password. However, I have provided an alternative locking mechanism which works by disabling all the system keys, the Task Manager and completely takes over the screen - and this will automatically be unlocked if your Bluetooth device is found. However, I am not 100% convinced yet that this is totally secure so I have provided the option to configure the program to define the locking mechanism used - you need to set the property useWindowsLock in bluelock.conf to either true or false. Please note that if you use the alternative locking mechanism under Vista you need to run Blue Lock as an administrator otherwise it cannot disable Task Manager.
I need to point out that if your PC gets locked by the custom lock but you cannot unlock it and are forced to power-down, the next time you start it you may find that Task Manager is still disabled. If this happens, all you need to do is to perform a (custom) lock, followed by an unlock (i.e. by making sure the Bluetooth device is in range) and it will be back to normal again. If you still get stuck please drop me an email and I will try to help - I might even release a "reset" utility if this happens a lot.
If your Bluetooth device isn't found
Note - I get a lot of emails along the lines of "My phone [model X] isn't recognised, please help" - unfortunately I can't possibly test this software against every Bluetooth device, so if your phone/bluetooth adapter isn't recognised there isn't a great deal I can do.
In Blue Lock 1.7 I have made various search parameters configurable so you can try experimenting with these - the values are documented at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa362925.aspx and are represented by a set of checkboxes.
Also, I have found that if you install VinsVision's "Additional Bluetooth Drivers for Microsoft Bluetooth in Windows XP SP2" at http://www.vinsvision.com/Articles/tabid/66/EntryID/13/Default.aspx there is a good chance that your device will be recognised. However, this means you will now be using the Microsoft Bluetooth stack which might be more limited than the one you have installed already - make sure you have your original Bluetooth drivers available in case you need to reinstall them.
If you have any questions or want to report a bug please drop me a line at
Blue Lock 1.9
Blue Lock 1.9
Blue Lock 1.8
Blue Lock 1.7
Blue Lock 1.6
