Have you ever needed to lock down a computer for public or shared multiple user use? Have you Ever needed to lock down computers in a non server non centralized environment? I was recently tasked with locking computers down for public use in computer labs at a conference.
It is a challenge to know what users may or may not have changed after using a shared computer. My users needed permission to make changes to the hard drive and or applications during computer use. However I did not want these changes to be permanent.
Some of the problems I have seen from users of shared computers are: spy ware, viruses, the windows theme completely changed, downloaded programs installed, a corrupt OS and more. It takes time to reload an OS or re-image a machine. No one wants to spend time reloading or re-imaging multiple computers if they don’t have to. I discovered a free utility from Microsoft that was exactly what I needed for locking these computers down. It is called Steady State.