Deep Freeze Troubles

xwesleyxwillisx

I have Deep Freeze Pro v4.2 installed on my laptop. Today I thawed it and defraged the drive it is installed on (C:\). When I restarted frozen, it came to a blue screen with an error with DepFrzLo.sys. The PC refuses to boot to Windows XP Pro.

I REALLY don't want to format C:\ and install Windows again (along with all my apps). If anyone here has had this problem before please help!

Thanks

Ricka182

Can you boot in safe mode? ALso, did you try the repair option off the XP Cd?

xwesleyxwillisx

Safe mode doesn't work either, neither does debugging or any of the other troubleshooting F8 boot options. I have serious doubts repairing with an XP cd will do me any good because the trouble is with Deep Freeze. It loads the stored image of the hard drive before Windows even boots. The error I am receiving is pointing to the Deep Freeze kernel file .

I have contacted Faronics tech support via email and am awaiting response.

RussS

I am thinking that you are screwed. Hook the drive up to another machine and drag your data off it. Then fdisk and rebuild.

I see on their blurb ... protects millions of PCs worldwide .... hmmm, I have never heard of it

JDMurray

I have used Deep Freeze and found it to be a pain in the @ss. Each time your PC reboots, it automatically restores the hard drive from previous image, sort of like an automatic version of Norton Ghost. This is great for automatically restoring a PC to a known state after someone has used it (like a public terminal or kiosk). You must deactivate Deep Freeze before installing new software, or it will over-write the new apps when it reboots.

I have noticed problems on system running Deep Freeze. It doesn't play well with some other programs, especially anti-virus software. It can also be a CPU hog, although I've never found out why. I've never encountered a problem using it to restore a system.

xwesleyxwillisx

Finally decided to just use Acer's Recovery CD that came with the laptop. Only cost me about an hour or two to restore and reinstall apps. Doubt I will be reloading Deep Freeze as it appears it may be creating more problems than it solves.

JDMurray

xwesleyxwillisx wrote:

Deep Freeze as it appears it may be creating more problems than it solves.

Believe me, you are not the first person that I heard this from regarding Deep Freeze. The administrators of the computer labs of a local community college that I attend came to the same conclusion. When it works, Deep Freeze is a great time saver.

gatzke

Solution (possibly). Although this thread is from 2005, I stumbled upon it recently when my laptop was having the same problem.

I recently called Faronics tech support about the issue and right away they asked me if I had a Dell with a memory card reader on the side. "Yes?!" I replied.

Their solution was to remove the plastic placeholder card before I reboot and sure enough, it worked.

I'd like to add that Faronic's tech support are very fast and knowledgeable. I've called them twice on seperate issues and am quite satisfied with their response.

As far as DeepFreeze goes, I couldn't imagine running a PC without it - I have it installed on all 4 of mine (2 laptops and 2 desktops) and there's nothing better than knowing that they're fresh and clean every reboot.

DefendingNetworks

Format C:

theseman

A sysadmin of a school division in my area runs it, and loves it. He loves not having to worry about what the kids do to the PC, knowing a reboot will fix it.

I have never tried it myself though.

tiersten

theseman wrote:

A sysadmin of a school division in my area runs it, and loves it. He loves not having to worry about what the kids do to the PC, knowing a reboot will fix it.

Until somebody formats the entire drive.

Deep Freeze sounds dubious to me. Lots of the reviews of it say that because its so awesome, you don't need to do any OS updates, install AV software or install a firewall. Yeah... Nice...

RobertKaucher

xwesleyxwillisx wrote:

Finally decided to just use Acer's Recovery CD that came with the laptop. Only cost me about an hour or two to restore and reinstall apps. Doubt I will be reloading Deep Freeze as it appears it may be creating more problems than it solves.

Should have tried recovery console. You can deactivate the services associates with it, or even just delete the driver. Also, sometimes chkdsk /r helps on issues like this. The driver is stored on a bad sector.... I also highly recommend you take a look at Windows PE!