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Deep Freeze - Protect your Hardrive from changes


Zilevoli

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Surprisingly I only came across one thread that wasnt even related to DeepFreeze. So here I am bringing up the software title.

This program once installed can "Freeze" the selected hardrives from being changed permantely. Say you get a virus on your computer and being like me hating most anti virus programs dont have one installed. Well if you have DeepFreeze installed a simple reboot will revert the harddrive to the state it was in when it was frozen.

My personal use is the above and to test programs out without using VMWare or something similar. Not really sure if its the best program to use, but my old school uses it on systems the students and teachers have access to and it seems to be working great for them, and myself.

Downside to this program. When I went to purchase rights to the darn thing, the company wont sell less than 10 ... and thats even contacting them. So I used the trial (standard) version (not as cool or as functional as the pro version) for awhile till I could get a pro copy from my work place for "work related" purposes.

Anyway try it out http://www.faronics.com/html/product.asp. I would like to hear any comments about this and // or alternate programs.

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Downside to this program.  When I went to purchase rights to the darn thing, the company wont sell less than 10 ... and thats even contacting them.

Weird. I just purchased 6 licenses of it last month... ? It works fine for some purposes, but personally I find it's a major PITA... I'd never install that on my PC.

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The best place to use Deep Freeze is a Cyber Cafe.

In such places, a restart is quite enough to retrieve the original state of a PC. No worries about users being beginners or even destructive.

But if your computer is a production machine, I don't suggest the use of Deep Freeze on it.

You might say that you'd leave a particular drive unfrozen to keep your work or downloads on. That's what I did, really.

By the time, I started to forget the limitations. I saved some of my work and some of my downloads in a location that I thought it was more relevant!

Simply, that relevant location was not on the unfrozen drive. Surely, you can imagine the rest of the story.

What I said is just my own experience. You may be luckier!

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@mazin

LoL ... handy tool and dangerous. I learned my lesson to back things up a long time ago. Reformats, harddrive crashes, stupid people deleting something they shouldnt, etc ... so yeah I have a drive for purely production, a backup device or two, and the main drive for testing. So far everything has worked out nice ... knock on wood.

@crahak

Eh my system goes under constant change and I personally dont like some changes. Having that reboot option is great ... only problem which is a PITA is settings are lost. If I like something enough ... just boot in thawed mode (making sure network connection is gone for safty precautions) and install that program or change a setting.

As for purchasing liscenses ... I didnt want more than 3 or 4, I should have said it wasn't for home use. Oh well ... I learned I can go through my work for a much much cheaper price (usually free).

@zbeta

CleanSlate sounds like a decent tool, gonna have to try it out. Thanks

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Cyber cafes would be a good place for that indeed. It would pay for itself very quick. I use that on some PCs that are all alike, and shared by a group of users. That way if they change configs, the next guy doesn't have to set everything back.

But yes, it does happen that you loose some work or files. Also, I've seen many complaints of apps like photoshop crashing with it - although it seems to work just fine on those where I installed it. (we're using v5.1 pro iirc)

As for CleanSlate, hadn't heard about that one yet.

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**** it - I shouldn't have bothered about this one. :angry:

The installer started - and went on for 15 seconds, then the system got rebooted suddenly without warning. Now I see that the service got installed but no link to app anywhere - no way to control it - re-running installer to install properly says that I have to stop the service first, but even after doing so, no go. :(

While installing, I thankfully chose to not have ANY drive frozen. I read the PDF that comes with it - no info there either.

Windows is far slower now, and resets frequently by itself. Let this be a note of caution to others: companies like this one, that boast about "millions of users" and still we haven't heard of them - they normally turn out to be the sort of useless problem that is being caused now, for me.

Anyone have any ideas about how to get the **** thing off my system (short of re-formatting my systemdrive). Or atleast, will that re-formatting help - is it a windows app, or does it run at a lower system level?

--------------

And for those that still want this app:

Don't bother going to their trial-page, then signing up for it, etc. - its a waste of time. They make you run so much, just to give a link to download the app.

Here you are - direct link to file:

http://www.faronics.com/exe/DeepFreezeSTDEv.exe

(2.1 MB)

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I've had some major problems with it like that too...

Now, the ugly part is, it uses some low level stuff, and it tends to protect itself well too :lol: Reformatting would definately get rid of it. Deleting the files from WinPE or such *might* work, but I'm sure there is more to it (registry entries and what not). Removing low level drivers like that just might crash it hard.

there's several files:

depfrzlo.sys : kernel driver

depfrzhi.sys : filesystem driver

dfserv.exe : the service it installed

frzstate.exe : the password app

persis00.sys : password file (replace with one that uses a known password if you lost yours... also contains the information to tell it at boot time in what mode to boot frozen/thawed)

(I'm not sure where it keeps it's mirrored copy of the HD or whatever information)

I've had that problem where it had installed like that (and with no password...) Couldn't find anything on the web (nor was their support helpful). On other occasions - it was impossible to install. it would crash mid install, and you could not exit the installer... At first I thought it was maybe something like the AV interfering with it's installation or something like that. I ended up uninstalling EVERYTHING and it still wouldn't install... The only way I ever got this thing to install properly is - install windows and immediately after install it, then the rest of your stuff...

Overall speed wise, I can notice, but it wasn't really a big change (that was on P4 3GHz's with 1GB Ram mind you) Random errors, reboots, crashes... It does happen. It seems not to like apps that use their own proprietary memory management (like photoshop) too much. It definately slows photoshop down too...

Like I said before, it has it's uses, but I'd rather not have to deal with it.

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Trapped?! hahahaha

To logon, use one of these ways:

1. Hold down the SHIFT key and double click on the Deep Freeze icon on the Windows System Tray and the Logon screen will be displayed. Enter your Password. If Deep Freeze has been configured for passwords the next screen will display a Password and Boot Control Tab (see below).

2. Use the Hot Key combination CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+F6 to access the Login screen. Some installations of Deep Freeze Professional may have been pre-configured to remove the Deep Freeze Icon from the Windows System Tray.

Before uninstalling the program, disable it by choosing the "Boot Thawed" option, then reboot your PC. Now, Uninstall it.
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Muahahahaha....... :lol:

I'm (thankfully) not trapped.

What has happened, is I believe the installation did not complete. So now it is running in some sort of suspended state. No drive is frozen, no service of it is running. But still, there's its folder name in program files with one file "dfs5serv.exe" and this service was running - so I set it to disable the service from computer management.

So now, one would assume it hasn't been installed, right?

WRONG. I see no way it allows me to delete that file - because it is "in use". And task-manager does not show that EXE as running. I see no entry in startMenu>>Programs, or Add/Remove, to uninstall it. So I thought running the installer again might allow me to uninstall (as many programs do it that way). But if I run the installer - it says to stop deep freeze, and then run the uninstall. Now where the hell can I stop it from, if it is *NOT* running in the first place. There is no system tray icon, and the hotkey combination doesn't do anything.

I need to remove it now, because it is interfering (I don't know how it does it) with normal operation - more RAM usage than normal, slower than average, random reboots, etc.

Now my only concern, is whether it uses low-level overlays on the drive. Like... you know the sort of BIOS-level disk-overlays seagate/maxtor used to give out, to enable you to use large disk drives with older BIOSes. In such a case, even a re-format can't help me, and if it doesn't allow access to normal view of partitions, god save me :( (I'm afraid, because roxio goback used to do this - it had a drive overlay on the system - not controllable thru windows, and if you tried using any partitioning tools without removing goback, all you'd see was one big chunk of free space across the HD - even as everything continued to work fine. Only once you removed goback, you could see your partitions in the way they were. It caused me loss of 2 gigabytes of MP3s at a time when it would take 1 hour for 2 MB to download. So you can understand how much of an "shock-after-effect" it still has on me).

If this deep-freeze is simply a windows thing - where it does all its things directly from windows - then its simple - a format will be enough. Does it go more low-level than just windows? (like functioning directly thru BIOS extension commands, etc.)

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EDIT:

mazin, I'm unable to run the program at all, coz its not fully installed. And the installer neither wants to complete installation, nor uninstall itself.

@tim

It works by making the user sick of itself. Seriously don't even consider using it.

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So just how does DeepFreeze work then?

Any ideas?

It keeps your files, Registry, and programs in a virtual drive. Whatever changes occur on your PC, they aren't added to nor subtracted from that virtual drive.

@prathapml

You can see if it's there in HKLM....Run or HKCU....Run. If yes, it's allowed to be deleted even if the service is loaded.

If no, reboot to DOS prompt with a StartUp disk (LOL) and delete the file manually from its location. You might need to use "attrib -r -s" before deletion could be possible. I'm not sure if this is necessary.

Finally, yes you can reboot to DOS and format your system drive with no problems afterwards.

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That's it - the last straw (which proverbially broke the camel's back).

It ended up reducing my system to such a pitiful state, That even trying to start writing CDs would crash it and get it to restart! :(

Five minutes into a new install, and all looks fine (for now).

Stay away from Deep Freeze! :ph34r:

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