I saw a thread about how people manage their security on ars technica.
Personally, I would never even consider running a computer without installing deep freeze immediately after a fresh install, before connecting to the net. It's like the final lock in the system, with near zero performance hit.

I guess I'm just wondering why this isnt a more popular solution! It's also cheap. And for my data, I just have it on a seperate partition that is not frozen.

If you dont know what it is you can check it out at the link. Literally one reboot and your hdd is untouched.

Thoughts?

http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp

How do you install applications / games without deepfreeze reversing the changes?

Well, it is more famous on the education departments, both my High School and University computer labs used it.

I don't see a use for it personally, im always installing new apps and changing config files, i think it would just be a hassle.

I figure the gain in security is simply not worth it for the amount of hassle and arsing around I'd have to go through in order to use my computer daily with it.

Hmm... maybe I am just super neurotic about a clean system... but I think it's worth it.
To install new stuff, you type in the DF password, and then reboot into an unfrozen state. You can then tell it, on next reboot, to freeze again.

As far as bookmarks etc, I just keep em 'in the cloud'.

Does anybody else out there use DF?

Deep freeze requires a min of 10 purchases before you can buy it...

You can get a home (personal) copy for $45.
https://store3.esellerate.net/store/checkou...PageCatalog.htm

The very concept of needing a reboot to get to unfrozen state is a turn off. What I do is I image my hard drive after I have a windows install up to date and with all the apps I use installed. Now when I run in to issues either because of infection or because of issues caused by a program I tried out I simply restore the image which takes 10 mins and voila I have a fresh install in mins. This in my opinion is a lot simpler compared to frequent switches between freeze and defreeze mode.

That said its a perfect solution for public computer where they simply don't want people messing with it. All you need is a reboot. Can't get more simpler than that.

Hmm it's seeming like I just have weird priorities then!
I also image the hard drive, before it's frozen.

^^^

since i don't run every exe and go to every shifty russian website i can find, i don't need that kind of ridiculously over-the-top cleanliness/security. i'll keep an image in a hidden partition, just in case things get really nasty, but i might have to restore that... pfft... once a year, tops.

doesn't seem practical for a home user. think of the madness when you'd fix up a relative's machine and they call you the next day FREAKING OUT because all the things they just did the previous day are gone. before you say "oh that wouldn't happen - i'd just show them how to unfreeze blah blah blah".... no.... if they won't even bother to use firefox when there's a firefox icon right beside the ie6/7 icon, they aren't going to bother with this.

every school I've seen has used deepfreeze, its more for computer stupid people and school where you dont want people messing with ****. For example I have installed on my fathers pc at his house. Since then, the stupid calls of "why do i keep getting messages telling me I won $10,000. Do they send me a check or something?" have since stopped.

I wasn't recommending it for a home user especially not for people who do not have a clear understanding of how computers work. Just incase it wasn't clear.



haha

Maybe Microsoft will make it better.... They've got a similar program in development called "SteadyState"..... at least, i think its still in dev.... correct me if i'm wrong.

Been out for nearly a year now - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en

Oh, nice. I'll have to check out that SteadyState business...

I dunno, something about nothing altering the state of my PC in any way is appealing to me.

Plus I don't have to run AV or bot checks...

how would you do bookmarks? whats the "cloud"?

Storing them using delicious google bookmarks etc., meaning online on somebody else's server, as opposed to stashing 'em in my Firefox bookmark bar which would be wiped on reboot.

you can use google bookmarks (attached to their toolbar)

As other people mentioned, it pretty much makes your computer useless.

I'm running firewalls on all my computers (app based firewalls) and AV on my Windows PC, and my router is running another firewall (set to reject everything by default), a port scanner shows a total of 1 port open, and that's just when I'm running the app on that port.

My configuration gives me good security, and i can still save files.

This is the software that they used at my high school. This thing is unbreakable.

We use deepfreeze at work. For public computers it rocks. ITs not really meant for home use.

You can set it to automatically unfreeze at a certain time and then have wsus download the updates at that time and have the virus scan do the same time then have the computer refreeze at a specific time.

You can also use the deep freeze console to remotely wake up the pc.

ITs also pretty hard to crack.

With deepfreeze you can also have a thaw drive which is allowed to be changed and not effected so if yo uwant to store all your documents and music and game saves and stuff create a thaw drive.

Deepfreeze is awesome!!!!!

IMHO, Deep Freeze is only worth getting if you have to handle a large amount of public access computers...or if you have a kid at home who screws things up all the time.
Internet Cafes, Some college/university labs, some high school labs, public terminals - all great places for this product.

But if you have a good domain admin, you can pretty much set rules to restrict just about anything and get as detailed as you need. DF is just a quick and dirty solution.

The down side.. is that you can't do automatic updates... since DF would just revet it. Same goes for any changes you push using Group Policy... DF would just revert them next time you boot up.. and the policy would have to be pushed again...and again...and again...

My school has deepfreeze on every computer students use, but they also have Novell on there with everything restricted, and Norton and SpySweeper. They have the network drives with our home folder unfrozen. But i think they're pretty secure there. haha. That bad thing about it is that they dont get automatic updates. They only have SP1 on the computers.

Your wrong. Deep freeze allows yo uto have dep freeze automatically have the computer reboot unfrozen and then set a time where the pc reboots frozen. Then you use Group policy to set windows update to download the updates from an wsus server at that time. Deep freeze compliments grou policy very well. we use deep freeze with an antivirus server, group policy and wsus all work perfectly.

If you dont beleive me here is fro mthere web site

http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp

"Schedule Thawed Maintenance periods to perform Windows updates through the Internet or a SUS/WSUS server or run a custom batch file to update your antivirus definitions
Schedule Send Message tasks "

its very easy to break forget how now but it was done this was 6 years ago.

IT has been patched up since then. I use it at work and if you use it with wsus,group policy , and a virus scan, and a firewall no hacker would even dare touch the machine ( this is how i have the comps set up). Also this setup is actually not that bad maintanance wise since everything is updated autimatically.

I'm a network engineer for the school district where I live, and we've used Deep Freeze since I've worked there (and I've seen about 3 revisions of the software, all having common problems). Now, we're moving away from Deep freeze for several reasons:

1. its not as stable as you might think. Infinite reboots happen often. Like, when you thaw a computer and go to refreeze it for some reason it just goes into either a blue screen mode every time you boot up, or it just reboots constantly.

2. Its too difficult to manage Windows Updates with the software. I know it has the options to do that in the administrative versions, but thats difficult do manage.

3. In the deep freeze console that is distributed to Computer Techs managing it, since the remote computer listing is WINS based its not reliable. Some computers fail to show up for unknown reasons.

4. Computers get "permafroze". This is issue #1 really. When you push the key sequence to bring up the box occasionally the box fails to display. When it does, even if you do type in the password the computer may not completely thaw.

5. The software is difficult to update since it doesn't work well with vLANS (since its WINS / Broadcast based).

6. To solve the issue of bookmarks / My Documents the Enterprise (which is what we used) has the ability to make a "thawspace". This is a virtual hard drive that deep freeze creates on install. It is possible to use registry keys to move specific parts of the profile to the "thawspace". The thawspace has problems such as corruption. Since the data is stored in some sort of proprietary ISO (humor me if you will -- its actually some sort of .dsk file) if the file becomes corrupt there is no way to recover the data.

7. In the older versions of the software they will freeze your external hard drives.

8. Computers can become "semi-froze" if you try to build an image of a frozen machine and restore the image to another computer (using something like Ghost, PartImage, or Acronis). This leads to serious difficulty making the image usable.

9. An image made from a frozen computer with a thawspace is HUGE.

10. Since the thawspace is set by the Administrator if the deep freeze build's thawspace is larger than the hard drive, Deep freeze shrinks the thawspace to accommodate the system. This is good, however it is extremely unstable.

11. It is next to impossible to put AntiVirus software on the computer reliably. (it is possible for people to delete it if you put it in a location that it can be updated).

12. There are cracks for some of the older versions. (can be found easily through google -- The other techs and myself started using them actually it was faster than calling the Help Desk for a token to thaw a computer).

13. There are Viruses which infect the boot sector. If a virus infects C -- you're ok. However if the build of deep freeze has a thawspace the virus will also infect that. Since the thawspace doesn't reset itself the virus reactivates on the system every time its booted up and the thawspace initalized. If you have network drives mapping to this computer those also become infected. Then other computers open those drives and become infected themselves. (You see where this is going...) We had to re-image every single machine at a high school here due to this problem over Christmas break.

There ya go... 13 reasons why deep freeze sucks -- coming from a systems admin at a k-12 school district.

Although don't get me wrong, it could have been managed better and some of these problems could have been avoided, but the problem remains.

Again, don't take that the wrong way... I use it at home. Its on my little bro's PC. The software outlived the hardware (the PSU died...). Deep freeze is really great when it decides to work right.

I know, i have asked the same question myself.
I myself havent installed it on my pc, but it is installed on my brothers laptop, because he dosent practice 'safe hex'.
He visits all the pron sites you can think of, and more, and will click on basically anthing that catches his fancy.
Hey, he is an adult, he can do what he wants to, fine by me.

The problem is, i used to have to fix it every month.
Got sick of doing that, installed Deep Freeze, and BAM, no more hassle for me.

Now, specifically for the bookmarks issue.
Dude, use firefox portable.
So simple! i do.
The install it on your unfrozen partition, since its portable, all the stuff, including the profiles is stored on the SAME drive.
You see, even if you install firefox on D: drive instead of the C: drive which has your main OS (for example) still, the %APPDATA% folder will have a firefox folder.

This problem is solved with firefox portable.
every extension works.
you can download it here:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

tell me what you think.

I have deep freeze installed on my home computer used by everyone at home. The operating system is XP Pro. I used powertoys to relocate the my documents, favorites and all the special folders windows has. Firefox profile folder is setup in D Drive where all the data resides. Everyone has their own directory on D Drive. The hard drive is frozen. I thaw it when I find time to update windows and security software. It used to be such a headache having to fix it every time somebody messes it up. Now no problems whatsoever.

well that doesn't defeat the purpose at all...

It's like System Restore on Steroids.

it's very good...and probably good to revert messed up systems with spyware/viruses/malware etc to safe state.

here's another one


Rollback RX
http://www.horizondatasys.com/169614.ihtml

I guess you don't want your work saved. But I do and hence the setup.

Lol. In my high school we receive HP tablets for everyday work, and each laptop distributed has DeepFreeze installed on it.

It's pretty kewl especially when doing things you wouldn't want the school to know about, just restart and everything is gone. But in all seriousness, it is great software.

My Rating: 9/10

EDIT: I'm going to get a copy of DeepFreeze soon, whether from school (I'm a student technician, have access to such software and I'll be sure to ask before I take. Our principal gave me a copy of PS as a reward for my hard work )

Whats the difference between this and Comodo DiskShield? Apart from price.

Link me to w.e. the hell Comodo DiskShield is and I'll tell you the difference. I tried searching it but to no avail; Comodo is well known for their Firewalls.

What does Deep Freeze do?

Freezes the system so that if any idiot goes on it and deletes system files or screws around, one reboot will revert it to original condition. (your last freeze point)

Although after every school i've attended using deepfreeze, you notice small flaws. It doesn't clean all directories properly, if i install firefox, then reboot and install again, my cookies from firefox are not removed (as i am still logged in to websites.)

a nifty program called Deep-Unfreezer is also available (google it), allowing people like me to unfreeze the computer, install programs, then refreeze it so they are permanently there. I experimented with it in high school a bit, now i install counter-strike source on college computers to play in my spare time, so i don't have to reinstall it every time. Even though my college gets 70,000/70,000 approx. on speedtest.net, and downloads range from 1 - 10 mb/sec (depending on how many students are using it at that time of the day), downloading 3+ gigs still takes a couple minutes =\

Trust me, if someone really wants to screw something up, they will find a way to get around it like i did. (supposing they know where to look)

it's a decent program if you have younger family members though, so they don't keep installing stuff without your consent and downloading programs like limewire and getting you viruses galore. That, and you won't be asked to fix the computer every 3 days by other siblings.

I used to use Deep Freeze at work, but it made managing things a pain.

I use SteadyState now. Far easier.

I was interested in the product but it's such a hassle to use. I need to get things done as I think of them or else I will loose momemtum. Rebooting is not my favorite activity.

Same here.

Lol i remember when I use to work for computer services at the college.
I had to take care of about 150 pc's every morning.

- I had about 10 floppy disks with me and would go lab to lab loading images to get rid of
junk people download and installed day before.
- It would bring our image server to knees with about 50 pc's loading at the same time.
- Then we started experimenting with deep freeze and things changed.
- All it took was one reset and pc was back to normal state.

Anybody complaining about deep freeze and windows updates doesnt know how to use it. Get the corporate one and use the deep freeze server.

You can set all the computers to reboot unfrozen for say 4 hours and then have your wsus server and virus server install updates at that time.

Also if your pc's are blue screening with it yo ueither have a very old version or software like an out of date antivirus that doesnt get along with it.

We use it here at work (public library)and it rocks. Something gets screwed up reboot.

I have a feeling all the people complaining about deepfreeze have never used the enterprise version or an older version.

also this deep unfreezer needs admin privaleges to work

". We must get inside Deep Freeze code, but to do that we need debug privileges. This right is granted to the administrator by default, but Deep Freeze removes it to prevent someone from doing what we are going to do. To restore this privilege get inside Windows 'Control panel', access the 'Administrative Tools' and choose 'Local Security Policy" (or run SECPOL.MSC from a command line)."

Who in their right mind would give any user admin rights?

As long as you have deep freeze unfreeze at say 3am -5am and have your virus scanner and wsus server install updates in that time period

also make sure that the users are not admins

+

group policy

+

my documents in a thaw space(or just have no thaw space and users need to use a usb stick)

You will have a computer that will be pretty much safe and not worth a hackers time.

Pfft! Deep Freeze don't do **** all. LOL. There's an easily used buffer overflow error (which even a regular user can "activate") which causes DF to cease functioning properly.

There are also a couple back-door tricks which work for specific changes.



And no, I will NOT share information about these exploits. They are out there, though.

To quote the guy from 'Little Britain' - "Ye, I Know"