How to Login to Windows XP/7 Using a USB stick for authentication

Solution 1:

There's a "hacking" dongle out there that acts as a HID keyboard and can be programmed to act on events and send keypresses to a computer...

...but I fail to see how you get accountability or track-keeping with a physical artefact without some added personal knowledge like a password or a pin number or if it's truly one-use only. The stick could easily be lent, borrowed, copied and so on unless you personally watched over it and if the password was shared there's no accountability and no incentive to keep it private for any possessor.

If there's central user administration I'd just go with creating and handing out personal accounts for those who need them, separate administrative accounts as well (or grant the regular accounts the permissions needed when needed). You could then enable and disable them at will and with some decent-level speech about personal accountability they won't be shared as often as a stick.

Solution 2:

You want a Windows PKI USB Token. You can assign a passworded certificate to it, then control through Cert-to-User mapping. When they're done, you revoke the cert (or only make it valid in the first place for a week). If they lose it, you have to replace the Token, but no big deal. Still make them a separate User-Admin account (usually their standard login, with "-admin" appended) and give that account admin access.

If you need more details on how to set this up let me know, and I'll post more.