new computer, want to keep it pristine

@Tradetime, thanks, that'll work.

@BZ, I may consider SD $35.00. I just bought the new box.

In fact I may need to swap out Returnil, she uses Picassa for photos and I guess (w/o checking) that Picassa stores the photos on the system drive.

...screamer

 

Can you specify what you mean by this?

I have no problems with SD excluding files/ folders from shadowing & automatically commiting updates to these exclusions.
I appreciate you had some problems with SD but the latest update does seem to work without problems.
I haven't played around with passwording SD so I have no idea how robust it would be.
Returnil is a nice app. but IMHO doesn't offer any more than SD in this regard.
That said, with the OP's request I'm not convinced shadowing's the way to go anyway.
The problem at the moment for parents of semi-computer savvy kids is that there isn't yet a single product that covers the need for a steady state & protected system and allows easy data back up & maintenance such as Windows & AV updates without too much parental intervention!
I've spent hours trying to develop a suitable setup for my oldest and 3 months later I am still thrashing around looking at different combos of Deep Freeze, Shadow User, SD, Returnil, Rollback Rx ,SandboxIE, Folder Mover, Drive Sentry and various folder 'locking' softwares.
The problem is that none of these softwares were truely designed for the job required - usually they're for public computers where steady state and centrally administered updates are the norm & often they're far too complicated to be used in a largely unattended fashion.
My best suggestion at this stage for the OP would be to go for Rollback Rx, Defense Wall, Online Armor, Realtime AV & on demand AS with a separate Data partition, moving My Docs to that area , accepting that every week or so you will need to clean, Rollback & update in that order.
Ultimately, I guess some smart company will address the need for a suitable system for home users but by that stage I guess my oldest will probably have downloaded half the spyware on the net & hacked a few corporate mainframes... Ho, hum...

 

This is confusing...what's the difference ? I don't know about Returnil but for SD, if you set the password, users will need to key in the password to access the menu or disable it.

 

Agree.....screamer's best bet is Rollback scheduled to take snapshots in the background without her daughter knowing it. Then when the computer has problems, he can rollback to a functional state and she will learn her simple ways. Really no point talking about a pristine computer with a new user.

 

Personally, this is my set up. I have 4 partitions. C: is my Windows drive. E: is my Program Files drive. F: is my documents drive and G: is my security drive. I use Deep Freeze and have my C: and E: frozen. I have any program that keeps a profile or data file saved to my documents drive (ie Firefox & Thunderbird profile, Quicken data files, My Documents, etc). My anti-virus, firewall...essentially any security program that requires an update installed on the G: drive.

Works great for me.

 

LOL.....what is your D drive ? Is this a test or what ?

 

I admit, I didn't read each post, but I thought this might help. One correction though. C: and E: are frozen. Malware can't infect the program files or window files. Since both the F: and G: drives are unfrozen, documents can be saved to the F: and emails and favorites are saved there also. New virus files, modification to the firewall, etc are allowed on the G: drive.

I guess I'll go read the entire thread thoroughly when I get home.

 

Windows SteadyState a pain in the ass?
Maybe you are talking about its predecessor Shared Computer Toolkit; that was really difficult to configure and maintain even for advanced users. But SteadyState is a pretty easy. And the most important, is the only application that can deliver what you want.

ps. You do not even have to install another software for achieving what you want. If you know how to use the account group policy, you can easily make XP safe for your daughter. SteadyState makes configuring and managing the users accounts a joke.

 

There were too many options to configure for my liking. Unfortunately, when I un-installed this app, it took some of my configuring and managing abilities with it. In limited account I no longer had XP Style Start Menu, couldn't access the registry even when I change her account to Admin. Fortunately all I needed to do was to delete her account and set up another limited account. All the settings were available again.

I'm in the process of trialling Shadow Defender. It doesn't show up in the task bar of the limited user account and I can always remove it from the Start Menu. If push comes to shove, I can disguise the folder name in Program Files, but I really doubt it'll come to that.

I want to thank everyone for their active participation in this thread.

...screamer

 

if your daughter is pissed off because of the application you installed in her new PC, she might run windows recovery disc and she can start from scratch without you knowing it.

how you will solve that?

 

I would have assumed that this only committed the predefined commit locations, but the shell menu extension can also be removed by unchecking the "Enable shell context menu extension" option. I haven't tried, but assume that password enabling prevents this from being altered at will as well.

In any event, physical access and a motivated user are two things that are difficult to defeat.

Blue

 

Hello,
Can you set her machine up with security policies?
That should be fully transparent.
Mrk

 

After I removed Steady State, I can't access the security policies. Naturally I didn't follow my own rule of backing-up prior to changing something significant. I'm afraid this will take a complete re-install, and I'm not willing to go that far.

The documents she worked on yesterday were saved, the changes she made to the box were discarded.
It appears that Shadow Defender (thanks Blue Zannetti) is the answer and I'll run it till weeks end. If it proves itself a viable solution, I'll purchase it.

...screamer

 

Was the daughter happy with the removal of the changes, she made to the box ?

 

No, but it doesn't matter, My House, My Food, My Rules...

...screamer <-- demigod

 

screamer,

My pleasure - but yes, try it on a bit to make sure it fits your needs.

Current build seems stable enough, and this type of package (as either SD, Returnil, ShadowUser Pro, or many of the other somewhat related applications) go a long way to providing anyone simple effective protection.

Blue