Mimic Deep Freeze?
Hello everyone!
I have a weird question that I was hoping someone might have the answer for. I work in higher education. We have multiple labs that have 1000s of students who use these computers on a daily basis. Our department heads are asking for a way to have our lab computers setup in KACE which will allow them to restore to the original image upon logout or reboot. I've mentioned that Deep Freeze would be the solution, but they have refused to pay for the software.
Has anyone come across this type of situation? We have both the KACE SMA and SDA. Any advice?
I've thought about setting up a script to delete all unnecessary user profiles upon logout, just not sure if it will cause more problems than help.
Thank you.
Answers (2)
Do the following:
SDA:
1. create an image for the labs.
2. make a label for all labs or lab groups (something like: lab 1-line 4 or whatever you want)
3. create an automated deployment which runs every morning 2hr before the access to the labs is given.
SMA:
1. create a label for all the labs or lab groups
2. make a WOL for the labs before the image process
Domain:
create a GPO which deletes all temp folders, user profiles (which are not default) etc. Probably it is a good idea to use roaming profiles, so the users have all data on the server and not locally (which can cause issues if a soon to be bachelor has all of his data from the day on the PC in the lab and lost a whole day of work instead of his games)
Comments:
-
Thank you for the reply. I forgot to mention that we are not allowed to PXE boot in our environment. We also do not have access to GPO on the domain. Only local. - cbargas 4 years ago
Here's one option:
Windows 10 Unified Write Filter: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/customize/enterprise/unified-write-filter
For cleaning profiles I use delprof2 in combination with a script on the SMA that runs daily. The script uses delprof2 to remove any profiles that are older than 7 days, which allows frequent users of the same machine to not lose files (handy for instructor computers).
Comments:
-
UWF is awesome! Unfortunately, we have a subscription to Windows 10 Pro. It will let us install UWF, but wont let us run it.
Thanks for the delprof2 suggestion. That looks promising. - cbargas 4 years ago
