Short question: Can you use group policy to allow users to disable\enable devices without giving them full administrative rights to a machine?
More detailed: We have machines that crash on logoff\reboot when using a serial to usb adapter. The serial device was never designed to be abruptly disconnected by USB and it causes the OS to hang.
The fix was to write a program to detect logoff\reboot, block it them, disable the serial device, and then proceed to logoff. It works great with the exception that I have to grant users admin rights to the Windows machine.