I came across Windows Steady State in my search for a free alternative for Faronic’s Deep Freeze. Though it is not quite as effective as deep freeze, it covers the basic task of keeping users from making changes to your computer’s setup. It does this by creating an compressed image of the hard drive and reverting back to it when it is in, for lack of a better term, the frozen state.
Here, ‘frozen’ means exactly what it sounds like – nothing changes. Ok, so that’s not exactly right. While in the frozen state, the computer allows the user to do anything he or she wants, but when it is restarted it reverts the computer and all of its settings back to the image it created when the program was installed (or the last time it was ‘thawed’ whichever is more recent).
The hardest part to this program is setting it up. Where Deep Freeze is a fairly quick and simple setup, Steady State takes 20+ minutes to setup and requires the user to check lots of boxes. Steady state runs on Windows XP & Vista, where Deep Freeze has versions out for other past Windows operating systems as well as for Mac computers.
Though Steady State is not for the average user, it does provide a fairly simple FREE way to keep users (especially useful for children) from messing up your computer. The only drawback to these programs is you have to make sure to save anything you want (unless you specify in the setup) to an external source or a separate partition on your computer.
If you have any questions reguarding this post or either of the programs mentioned, email technologysolutions4@gmail.com.
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