Weekly restoring software.

[masterLoki]

Hi everyone.

I've been asked to admin an Internet Cafe remotely (it's in another city) and I'm having some troubles finding a software that helps me to do the following:

Allow users to "corrupt" the machines from Monday to Saturday but on Sunday automatically reset the machine to its original state. The point of this is to allow to install anything they need/want but reverts this on weekends

I'm aware of Deep Freeze (which we are currently using) but it will erase all changes on reboot. Also since will be working with Windows 7 SteadyState isn't an option (No support). I've checked SmartShield, Shadow Protect and Clean State sites, but I'm not sure if those are up to this task.

Hope anyone could point me into the right direction. I'll really appreciate it.

 

[jeoff_b]

I may not be the best to respond, but I would advise sticking with deep freeze. What you have to do it "unfreeze" the drives your making the changes on, "freeze" it again. This way whenever you restart (as you already said) any corruptions / virus' etc would be gone. If you want to allow them to be able to keep stuff for the weekend and lose it after, just don't reset the computer until the weekend...

 

[PTNL]

Look into the Data Igloo addon to work alongside DeepFreeze. You may even consider the Anti-Executable product to prevent users from running unauthorized software.

And for an added recovery measure, look into Acronis's Backup and Recovery software. There's a wonderful feature called "Startup Recovery Manager" that gives a <F11> prompt to restore a drive from an image. This would really cut down on any downtime from "wipe and rebuild" scenarios; I've seen it recover an OS drive with some installed apps (from an image located on a second/hidden hard drive) within 10 minutes.


Edit: Just saw that you wanted to allow software installs. So Anti-Executable is your call for this customer.

 

[jeoff_b]

That's why deep freeze is nice, the user can install any sort of software they want. They can download viruses and whatever and when the computer is restarted, it is back to the way it originally was. I've talked to a lot of people in this situation and they just use deep freeze and it works great for them.

 

[Cmustang87]

*SNIP*
I've checked SmartShield, Shadow Protect and Clean State sites, but I'm not sure if those are up to this task.
Hope anyone could point me into the right direction. I'll really appreciate it.

I've used ShadowProtect quite a bit, and it has a centralized management console that you can manage all workstations on the network. It's a solid software, I think it would be up to the task.