Computer problems? Just reboot and return to out of box state.

April 9, 2008 9:21 AM

I went to a community college and the computers they had were able to reimage them self each time you rebooted the computer. You could trash the whole OS and render it useless but when you turned it off and back on it was in an OOB state. Where can I find something like this? It would be perfect for work.
posted by KI6ILS to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

We used software like that at college; it was called Deep Freeze.
posted by phoenixy at 9:23 AM on April 9, 2008

Yep, Deep Freeze is what most places use. Microsoft also has a free solution called Windows SteadyState.
posted by pete0r at 9:25 AM on April 9, 2008

Best answer: We used Deep Freeze in the labs at my college too.
posted by stopgap at 9:35 AM on April 9, 2008

Two other easy ways to achieve effects like this: boot from a Live CD; boot straight into a virtual machine app (that always starts with a fresh image.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 9:35 AM on April 9, 2008

We use one of the above solutions for our public access computers at work. These are heavily locked down machines though.

If you are in a similar situation, go for it. But if this is just for your own use or the use of other trusted users, I would consider going the VM route that Zed mentions.
posted by utsutsu at 9:49 AM on April 9, 2008

If you have a good network, you could also consider netbooting, of course.
posted by so at 9:55 AM on April 9, 2008

Driveshield / MacShield (See also)
posted by bhance at 9:57 AM on April 9, 2008

Yeah, sounds like DeepFreeze to me too, we used it at the university where I worked. It's really handy for testing software or for trial-period software that you only use occasionally.
posted by Who_Am_I at 1:19 PM on April 9, 2008