Have you ever lost your laptop? Let me help you with the easiest way to track your stolen laptop or tablet. It is completely easy to do and you won’t need any advanced technical knowledge to be able to do it.
Losing a laptop or tablet can be a frustrating experience, not just because of the financial loss but also because of the sensitive data that may be on the device. The good news is that you can track or get your stolen or lost laptop or tablet back.
In this article, I will help you to understand how it works as well as how to get your stolen laptop or tablet back.
How To Track Or Get Your Stolen Or Lost Laptop Or Tablet
The procedure I am about to teach you works only on Windows-operated devices. So if you have your Windows laptop or tablet stolen, you can easily track or get it back.
The whole idea evolves around using Microsoft’s Find My Devices feature to help track the stolen device. You should also note that the feature must be activated on the device before it gets stolen else it won’t work.
In case you want to track your smartphone instead, there is an earlier article on this blog about how to track your smartphone using Find My Phone. You can also read that for more insights into how to find your smartphone.
How to set it up
Most laptops these days come built-in with GPS trackers. That is what you will have to leverage to locate your laptop if it gets stolen or lost.
To be able to set it up, you must be using a laptop or tablet that runs the Windows operating system. It should be connected to an active internet and you must sign into your Microsoft account as well.
- Click on the Start button to open the Start menu
- Click on “Settings” or the gear icon
- When the Settings dashboard opens, click on “Privacy & Security“.
- Scroll down to the “App Permission” section and click on “Location“.
- Turn on the button to “Location Services”. This will help the laptop or tablet collect your location data. Refer to the image in the screenshot below.
- After activating your location, Navigate back to “Privacy & Security“.
- This time around, click on “Find My Device“.
- Turn the “Find My Device” button on.
That is it, Microsoft can now collect your location data at any time. You also note that if you don’t have an internet connection, Microsoft cannot collect your data.
How to track your laptop
Tracking your laptop requires that you get another laptop or a mobile phone with an active internet connection. If you have this ready, then follow the procedure below.
Open the web browser on the laptop or phone and visit this URL; https://account.microsoft.com/devices
Sign into your Microsoft account. By Microsoft account, I mean the one you Signed into on the missing laptop. You should land on a page similar to the one in the image below after signing into your account. Note that if you have logged into multiple devices, your dashboard will look different from what you have here.
- It shows your laptop as well as your Username on the laptop
- This shows the last known location of your laptop.
- Is the link to click to find your laptop on the map
- Your laptop’s serial number.
To locate your laptop, click on the “Find my device” button, and you will land on the Find my Device map. Check the screenshot below.
- On the top left corner of the map, you will see your laptop and some little information about your computer.
- Click on the “Find” button to pinpoint the actual location of the device.
- One interesting thing is the fact that you can remotely lock your device with your own preferred password.
Note that if the device is offline, you will not be able to find the device. You can track your device in real-time only if it is fully online.