This article is about Faronics Corporation, Deep Freeze.

Foreword

Recently, in schools, and not only in all places where computers are “shared”: Internet clubs, after all, offices, there is a problem of preserving the system’s settings in its original state, so that after each use nothing changes, doesn’t there would be viruses, the machine would not be a member of the botnet, etc.

In different cases, this can be solved in different ways: by creating profiles with limited rights (user, guest, etc.); using group policies (Prohibition of recording to certain places, prohibition of changing settings, etc.), depending on the level of restrictions.

In my case, it was necessary to give the user administrator rights, but so that he could not set any password, change the system settings, delete / put unnecessary and necessary programs, respectively. I decided not to use sophisticated group policies to prohibit, but simply “freeze” the computer. Those. everything in the current session is allowed, the user has full rights, but after a reboot, everything returns to the state that was originally set. And so every time. Whatever the user changes, everything is in vain: after the reboot, there will again be a “reference system”.

To complete this task, I chose the program Deep Freeze, which I will talk about in this topic.

How the program works

The operating principle of the program is simple: during installation, it creates an image of the partition that needs to be “frozen” (freeze) and at the next reboot restores the partition to this image. This means that the section will not be exposed to any threats, nor viruses, nor trojans.

Features and Features

• Work in Windows 95-Vista , Windows 2k / 2k3 Server , Mac OS X , Suse Linux (SLED)
• Support for SCSI, ATA, SATA, and IDE drives; FAT, FAT32, NTFS, ext2 and ext3 partitions
• There is an Enterprise version for Windows , which is distinguished by a convenient administration console, additional administration functions: keyboard / mouse lock, message sending, remote on / off / reboot, and also increased security

The rest is on the official website (in English)

Areas of use

• Office PCs (Deep Freeze + AD)
• Server
• Home computers (combined frozen system drive and the rest - no)

Prices

A one-year standart version with support for one machine costs $ 45. I agree that a little expensive, but who said ...;)
Read more about the purchase

Support

On the official website of the company there is a good collection of supporting materials, though everything is in English. If you need help installing in Russian, please contact, if I can, I will definitely help

Conclusion

The post turned out to be voluminous, and in general, about nothing, I just wanted to share how you can organize such a simple system protection. If we talk about Deep Freeze, then I think this is a good enough program that is easy to use in the Stantard version and well developed and provides many useful features in the Enterprise version.

Post scriptum

Faronics Corporation has quite a few utilities besides Deep Freeze, which significantly simplify the life of those who have a large computer park at their disposal. About them on the official website