Reboot and restore software

[Dominus Atheos]

Can anyone recommend any software that has this functionality? What I want to do is, every time I shut down, restart, or log off the computer, it restores my C:\ drive to an image and erases everything I've done since that image was created. Then I'd map my My Documents folder to my D:\ drive and run Firefox Portable so it could remember my browser history and favorites. Does anyone know of any software that can do this?

OS I'd be running on it is vista 64.

[DaveJB]

Ghost and a few other bits of software could do this I suppose, but if you're looking for something that would do it automatically at each bootup/shut down, I don't think there's anything that does that. You'd have to do it manually on each boot-up.

I suppose it begs the question, but why exactly do you want to do this every time you start up Windows? Bear in mind that Vista 64 is a lot less vulnerable to "system rot" than previous versions. I could understand wanting to do this once or twice a year, but it seems a bit excessive to do it every time. Plus there's the question of how you'd get Windows Updates and similar things installed.

[Dominus Atheos]

Ghost and a few other bits of software could do this I suppose, but if you're looking for something that would do it automatically at each bootup/shut down, I don't think there's anything that does that. You'd have to do it manually on each boot-up.

I know their is software out there that does this, I've seen it before in cybercafes, and every display model at best buy and other computer stores has it. Heck, some of the ones at best buy just have an icon on the desktop that does this.

[DaveJB]

Now I know what you're talking about; what those bits of software do is connect to a central server on each bootup, download a disk image, then decompress and install it on the client computer. What you'd need though is something that did the same thing, but did it from another hard drive within your computer; it looks like Ghost might support it, but I don't know for certain if it does so on a per-boot basis.

Really, you need someone who has experience with this sort of image deployment scheme to advise you; I only have experience doing single-system backup and restores, which is quite different to what you're proposing.

And again, mind if I ask what it is you're hoping to gain from this?

[Vendetta]

Unless you're utterly hung up on having Windows, you're probably better using a Knoppix live CD for this kind of read only boot environment.

[Uraniun235]

We use a program at work called Deep Freeze to accomplish exactly this with our Windows computers.

You build up your computer how you want it, and then install Deep Freeze. After it finishes installing, it reboots your computer, and when your computer boots up it comes up 'frozen'. You can put in a special key sequence (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-F6) to bring up a password prompt - put in your password, and you can set your computer to be 'thawed' (allow changes) for the next boot, the next (however many you want) boots, or until you manually set it to frozen again.

Pretty sure you can set it just to freeze certain partitions or drives.

[Beowulf]

Windows SteadyState
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/produc ... fault.mspx

I haven't used it myself, but it should be pretty much exactly what you're looking for.