These days everyone is concerned with Computer Security and making sure their computers and data aren’t compromised.  Once a computer is configured, the user is really the only person who can screw anything up or install programs they shouldn’t.  Deep Freeze from Faronics is an inexpensive product that will allow you to restore your system to the original state after every restart!  You can literally format the C Drive, restart and you are up and running!  You can “unfreeze” your computer make changes and “refreeze” the computer with the updated files.  The software works on Windows Vista, XP, 2000, 95/98 and MAC OS X.

Install the Deep Freeze Administrator Software on a computer.  Take note, you don’t have to install the Administrator program on the computer you are “Freezing”.  It’s actually recommended that you don’t.  The Administrator program is used to configure the Deep Freeze program, and create a single .exe file to be run on the computers you want to “freeze.  Once the software is installed on your computer, launch the Administrator Program.

Click on the Configuration tab, place a checkmark in the Enable Password box.  This will allow you to specify a password so that only people who know the password can unfreeze the computer.

Click on the Frozen Drives tab at the bottom.  Here you can specify which drives you wish to Freeze, and you can even specify external drives such as USB Drives or FireWire Drives.  But remember, when the system is frozen you can literally do anything you can do on a “unfrozen” or unprotected system.  You can read, write, access, delete, modify, format etc. but when you restart all those changes and modifications are gone!  Your system is restored to its original state.

Click on the Restart/Shutdown tab.  Here you can specify if and when you want the computer to restart or shutdown automatically.  Say you want all your computers to turn off for the weekend.  You could specify Friday at 10 p.m for the computer to shutdown.

Click on the Maintenance Tab.  Here you can specify a time that the computer will automatically “unfreeze” itself and go into a mode whereby you can update the Operating System through Windows Update let’s say.

Click on the Advanced Maintenance tab.  Here you can specify a WSUS or SUS server if you have one, or a batch file that you want to run, for example you could have a batch file that launches a new install of Microsoft Office using a .MST transform file.

The Thawspace is an area that you specify where you can save files and folders and these files will remain there even after the restart.

The Network tab allows you to specify whether you will be using DeepFreeze in Server Mode.  What this means is that DeepFreeze connects to a Server and can be remotely controlled using the Deep Freeze Console.  The LAN only mode means that you have to have physical access to the computer in order to unfreeze it.

The Win9x options are irrelevant unless you are using Win9x, so I’ll skip them.

Under the Misc tab you can specify whether or not you want to show the Frozen and Thawed icons in the System Tray, and a few other security features as well.

Once you have configured Deep Freeze click on the Create Programs tab.  Here you can create the various stand alone .exe files to control and install Deep Freeze.  The Full Workstation install is the program that will actually control the Freezing and Thawing process on the computer.  The Enterprise Console is the “Deep Freeze Server Management Interface”.  It allows you to control Deep Freeze installations in a Server configuration.

Tags | Disaster Recovery, General, Netware, Networking, Security, Windows Vista, Windows XP