Steady State

[cjohnsonuk]

Anyone used the new version of this seemingly very useful software?

 

Can it be managed via Active directory?

 

Is there a deployment guide?

Has anyone found there are some Gotchas?

 

ChrisJ

[strawberry]

last time i used it it was designed to work on standalone machines, theres very little in it taht cant be achieved with group policys and quite a lot of scope for stuff going wrong.

 

We use it for standalone machines for communal use and for exams as it cleans the hdd back to its original state.

 

We found it virtually impossible to deploy other than to just image and copy the harddrive.

[richard.thomas]

I've used steadystate for stand alone laptops awhile back. Need to becareful when it comes to imaging them as some of the settings muckup sysprep!

 

GPOs are much better than steadystate and steadystate is only meant for standalone machines. It's a pain to manage it though as you need to login as the 'locked' account to make wallpaper changes then log off and log on as administrator to lock down the other account and hope the settings stick

[Quackers]

We use it on every managed PC in the school, so all class room suites and laptop trolleys. FOR THE DISK PROTECTION PART ONLY.

 

We image the machine, then we just turn steadystate on manually at the end, and you need not worry again.

 

We use to use the old version of it to. As for the comment as its designed only for standalone machines, nothing could be further from the truth.

 

The manual even covers using it in the domain environent. There are also scripts to do bulk turning on and off in the forums on MS's site.

 

I could not imagine not using it anymore. Its fantastic.

[gshaw]

I looked at this as a freebie alternative to HDGuard, which we were using at the time. Unless it's changed recently there's no central management and tbh the disk protection ends up more of a menace really as antivirus, windows updates etc don't stick so more aggro when updating machines.

 

Gone over to mandatory profiles to keep a consistent teaching experience and further use of GPOs to take away stuff that doesn't need to be there...

[MkII]

But Steady State is designed to accommodate Windows Updates (and certain A/V)???

[gshaw]

But Steady State is designed to accommodate Windows Updates (and certain A/V)???

 

In what way though, is it just the usual deactivate on schedule jobbie or does it actually allow updates from certain sources?

[MkII]

Windows update is exempted from protection AFAIK. The system protection is always on. Same with AV sortware - well, the couple of supported ones!

[IrritableTech]

Windows update is exempted from protection AFAIK. The system protection is always on. Same with AV sortware - well, the couple of supported ones!

 

It is possible to update steady state config files to allow for more antivirus programs.

 

I have updated it for sophos for example. Check the steady state forums, there are a few that are unofficially supported.

[gshaw]

That is an improvement... now if Microsoft added a central management console we'd really be onto something:cool:

[kesomir]

The machine I installed this on developed a habit of closing the start menu a second after clicking on it.

 

Haven't touched it since.

[LeMarchand]

Bit of a thread resurrection - just wondered if anyone had more info on SteadyState?

 

Background: One of my (Primary) schools has a laptop for every child that TPTB will only agree to being locked down if serious abuse (porn etc) has taken place. The idea is that they can set up their home printers/networks and load on a reasonable selection of suitable games. Of course, this means that they (or parents/older siblings) load on P2P software (or in one case a Registry Editor to root out the anti-P2P software I had hidden) and pretty much any free rubbish-with-malware that they can find and then wonder why their laptops are "slow".

 

(On a side note, there have been a lot of duff chargers and now - after 2 years - the batteries are starting to go. They're HPs - anyone else had charger problems en masse?)

 

Anyway, it's getting to the stage where I just save their work and reimage which is fine, but takes time. My experiments with SteadyState have been promising, but I just needed a few ideas/pointers. (Has to be something free, as TPTB are tight - I'm having a job getting help/cash to condense the 2 servers, one of which I have had to "resurrect" twice, to one working one - and the laptops are all XP Home; if anyone can suggest anything better).

 

At the moment, it seems that the reset options are on reboot (no good) or on a set date, which can be activated by altering the date. The latter is a bit complex for teachers - does anyone know of a way (script?) that would launch on a button press, ask for a password and on confirmation then set the date to a suitable one for SteadyState to be activated? I guess that it would also need another button to reset the date to current. Of course, maybe there's some other way to activate the reset that I missed...

 

I think it is possible to set document storage to a separate partition, eliminating the need to back this up before "reset". Is this correct? If so, is there a way to prevent this area being used to install programs? Does it matter if they are?

 

As previously stated, the little darlings need pretty much full access. I did note that (on my experiment) the test pupil account could change passwords etc on the Admin account , I'm assuming this can be locked down - but is this at the expense of the ability to create more accounts? (Not necessarily a bad thing).

 

Finally (for now), what's to stop the more creative parents from installing a registry editor to root out SteadyState (or does the option to prevent registry editing stop this)?

 

I'm planning on taking a laptop home for the weekend and deliberately loading all sorts of rubbish/infections and trying to get to the registry anyway, but any help/pointers/advice would be gratefully received. If anyone is considering using SteadyState and wants me to look at anything in particular, post here and I'll give it a go if I have time.