Unfortunately, the included printed manual was of little use in explaining how the protection was supposed to operate. In fact, all of the prose associated with nTracker — the aforementioned manual, online help, and even the application's dialog boxes — are written in a confusing and inconsistent style of English that suggests a hasty translation from another language.
I learned the specifics of how the program works only after talking to SyNet. Of critical importance, I discovered that after a default combination of 7 days AND (not or) 5 reboots (longer durations can also be set, and only one reboot a day counts), if the machine is connected to an IP address other than the one used during installation, the software is supposed to invoke itself and prompt the user for a password. If the correct password is not entered, the system locks, displays the selected graphic, and encrypts the specified folders.
On particular note here is that a full reboot is required in this case — going into standby or hibernation mode will not trip the reboot counter.
If you travel frequently, and/or your ISP uses DHCP to assign IP addresses (as most do), you may eventually get prompted yourself, at which time you can enter your password to prevent lock-out and to have your current IP address locked in as "trusted" by the system.
So, after completing the installation of nTracker, I donned my mask and horizontal black-striped shirt to see how the utility would foil any attempt to pilfer my portable. Sure enough, within moments of installing nTracker on an IBM ThinkPad running Windows 2000 (SyNet says the program works with any version of Windows and any Internet connection, including a dial-up modem), I received an e-mail from SyNet on another one of my computers.
Back to Confusion
But that's where a bit more confusion set in.
The e-mail doesn't include a direct web link but rather an attachment that contains the information about your computer, and in order to open the attachment, you must utilize a client viewer application. The problem is that the documentation doesn't explain how to install the viewer on another machine so you can access the information about the computer you're trying to track.
It turns out that the viewer file is a self-contained executable — in other words, it doesn't need to be installed, just copied onto a machine. This lack of installation means there isn't an application associated with the .NTK attachment that comes with the e-mail, so the first time you access one, you need to detach the file and drop it on the viewer file in order to create it. After doing so, the attachment can be opened directly from the e-mail.
