Freeware equivalent to Deep Freeze

[Chris Dubea]

Hi all,

Some time back I set my Grandmother up with a Win98 box to do e-mail
and internet surfing. For being over 80 years old she has done very
well with it. The problems is every "expert" who comes to her house
has to futz with the thing. Most of the time it's harmless, but a
couple of times a year I get to go and spend 2-3 hours fixing her
computer because somebody installed the latest and greatest whatever.

In doing some researching, I came across called Deep Freeze
(http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp) which resets a Win98 box
to a known setup every time it reboots. Before I go and buy a copy,
is there a freeware equivalent of Deep Freeze?

Thanks folks,

===========================================================================
Chris

 

[Wayne D]

Hi all,

Some time back I set my Grandmother up with a Win98 box to do e-mail
and internet surfing. For being over 80 years old she has done very
well with it. The problems is every "expert" who comes to her house
has to futz with the thing. Most of the time it's harmless, but a
couple of times a year I get to go and spend 2-3 hours fixing her
computer because somebody installed the latest and greatest whatever.

In doing some researching, I came across called Deep Freeze
(http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp) which resets a Win98 box
to a known setup every time it reboots. Before I go and buy a copy,
is there a freeware equivalent of Deep Freeze?

Thanks folks,

===========================================================================
Chris

Image the partition. Someone screws with it, restore it.

or

"Are you concerned about inquisitive individuals rummage in your PC? Have
you no means of protecting your private data and system settings? Try
WinGuard Pro Free to keep malice and ignorance at bay.

WinGuard Pro Free is a program that lets you lock some features of your
system so that nobody can use them while you are away. The program lets
you specify a password and then choose from a variety of options - what
features to lock, for example, the find tool, backing up, desktop, etc.
All the options are listed within one window and they are self-
explaining, so there is no need to wade your way through dozens of sub-
folders and weird registry key values.

The limited version of the program is free - you're asked as you first
install the program what version you would like to activate: the free one
or the shareware one. Download the program today and lock your Windows
from prying eyes."

http://www.winguardpro.com/index.htm

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1707

Regards

Wayne D

 

[Dewey Edwards]

Hi all,

Some time back I set my Grandmother up with a Win98 box to do e-mail
and internet surfing. For being over 80 years old she has done very
well with it. The problems is every "expert" who comes to her house
has to futz with the thing. Most of the time it's harmless, but a
couple of times a year I get to go and spend 2-3 hours fixing her
computer because somebody installed the latest and greatest whatever.

In doing some researching, I came across called Deep Freeze
(http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp) which resets a Win98 box
to a known setup every time it reboots. Before I go and buy a copy,
is there a freeware equivalent of Deep Freeze?

They USED to have this on some computers at work. Daily, about 9 pm,
it would "reinstall" that "pristine" package. But about 6 months ago,
some malware (or person) overcame it, and for weeks no matter what was
done, the damn thing kept reinstalling the "pristine" malware at about
9 pm.

Everything that supposedly makes this type of program "infallible"
will daunt your every attempt to fix problems.

I would suggest that you instead stick with something like XXcopy and
clone a good c;\ drive and save that to disc. Note: this solution
requires a second bootable disc to actually run XXcopy. There are
several "ghosting" programs which can do this without the second disc,
but I know of none that are freeware. Here I hope I'm corrected.

 

[cdubea]

Everything that supposedly makes this type of program "infallible"
will daunt your every attempt to fix problems.

I would suggest that you instead stick with something like XXcopy and
clone a good c;\ drive and save that to disc. Note: this solution
requires a second bootable disc to actually run XXcopy. There are
several "ghosting" programs which can do this without the second disc,
but I know of none that are freeware. Here I hope I'm corrected.

Hi Dewey,

Unfortunately, this is an oldish box with a fairly small harddrive, no
CD burner running Win98. I live an hour away so intervention is not
particularly easy. She uses dial up Internet access or I would put
TightVNC on here machine to see what the problem is.

I was hoping to find something fairly "idiotproof" which would reset
the machine to a known state at boot-up. This of course is highly
variable depending on the intelligence of the idiot at hand.
Thanks,

Chris

 

[Roger Johansson]

I was hoping to find something fairly "idiotproof" which would reset
the machine to a known state at boot-up.

One method:

Boot from a floppy which is always left in the floppy drive.
On that floppy put DOS and a bat file which restores a partition image
with a clean installation of windows and other programs on C: partition.
You can use the freeware partion saving program named Partition Saving.
It can create a suitable bat file for automatically restoring a saved
partition image.

It takes 2 minutes to boot this way, but that is not much more than many
computers take to boot up anyway.


Another method is to boot the operating system from a live-CD.
Live-CD Linux systems are easy to find.
If you are good with computers you can create a windows live-CD,
instruction can be found on the web.

 

[Dewey Edwards]

Hi Dewey,

Unfortunately, this is an oldish box with a fairly small harddrive, no
CD burner running Win98. I live an hour away so intervention is not
particularly easy. She uses dial up Internet access or I would put
TightVNC on here machine to see what the problem is.

Then the "freeze" program definitely is out of the question. Nothing
new can be put on the c: partition (well, not without the expected
sysadmin's [you] knowledge and agreement to give one time passwords).
That means windows updates, virus updates, even email and any thing
else she uses or creates, is wiped out after every program cycle.