Microsoft "will no longer support Microsoft Windows® SteadyState™"

[6Foot2]

Link: Windows® SteadyState™ To Be Phased Out

 

Microsoft Windows® SteadyState™ will be phased out effective December 31, 2010. Microsoft will no longer support Windows SteadyState after June 30, 2011.

[zag]

hmm something else I have no idea what it does is discontinued.

 

Fine by me!

[K.C.Leblanc]

hmm something else I have no idea what it does is discontinued.

 

Fine by me!

 

It's got two main functions. One it lets you set up machines so they return to a snapshot on reboot, like Faronics Deepfreeze.

 

It also lets you lock down stand alone machines.

[chazzy2501]

Only , recently discovered Steady State. It's really useful for certain situations. I use it to lock down a non domained PC that the librarians use to monitior other PCs (Netop) and the IP CAMS. I can lock it into a state then if it goes wrong or is fiddled with you can power it off and on and it's back to normal! Perfect for display PCs.

[AyatollahPies]

Stupid move in my opinion. I'm having to use Comodo Time Machine on Windows 7 clients now.

 

(Which does appear to be working rather well I might add)

[LeMarchand]

SteadyState was one of those great ideas that never quite worked (in my experience). Tried it on a load of "home use" laptops, and if they weren't powered down properly it caused no end of problems.

[gshaw]

In theory the hard disk locking was a good idea, we had it here years ago but in practice it becomes a nuisance and certainly when we had HDGuard we had far higher hard disk failure rates as the drives seemed to get hammered by it!

 

Now we use mandatory profiles to set the user toolbar locations and anything that can't be reached by GPO. Gives a solid, consistent interface and stops tampering and generally a lot easier to manage

[webman]

In the forum thread view, this title got truncated to Microsoft "will no longer support Microsoft Windows®. I got my hopes up for a moment!

[tech_guy]

SteadyState does have its uses. I've used it on standalone laptops and with PCs in a small cybercafe run by a charity. It was easy and convenient to use and free.

[Azhibberd]

In all honestly it was nice to put on the machines you knew people where going to get abuse that didn't live on the domain, Shame to see it go... But always alternatives luckily

[mattjones]

We are currently using this on roughly 60 web books. When we received some Windows 7 web books, we were slightly amazed to find that they had stopped development of SteadyState. It is a great tool, but thanks to AyatollahPies, comodo appears to hit one of the main features we use - hard disk protection.

[Arthur]

Microsoft have created a set of three documents which describe how to replicate most of the functionality of SteadyState on Windows 7. Definitely worth a read if you are currently using it on older OSs or wanted to use it with Windows 7 but found it wasn't supported.

 

Creating a Steady State by Using Microsoft Technologies

Describes the native Windows 7 features and free tools from Microsoft that you can use to create a steady state on computers running Windows 7.

 

Group Policy Settings for Creating a Steady State

A reference that describes Group Policy settings that you can use to configure computer and user settings and prevent users from changing those settings.

 

The SteadyState Reference worksheet

You can use to look up and filter settings that this document and the reference describe. For example, you can quickly find information about settings that are related to Start Menu restrictions.

 

Now we use mandatory profiles to set the user toolbar locations and anything that can't be reached by GPO. Gives a solid, consistent interface and stops tampering and generally a lot easier to manage

 

This is precisely why Microsoft are are discontinuing SteadyState. They feel it isn't required anymore with modern operating systems like Windows 7...

 

Microsoft developed Windows SteadyState when the Windows management features were less robust and mature than they are today. As an example, many businesses allowed users to log on to their computers with full administrative access, simply because most applications required full access to the computer, and restricting users’ accounts significantly limited their flexibility.

 

On the other hand, Windows 7 is a modern operating system that supports modern management features. Businesses can more easily deploy standard user accounts (accounts with limited access to the system’s files and settings) without limiting users’ productivity. This contributes significantly to your ability to simulate many Windows SteadyState features by using native Windows 7 features. Additionally, many Group Policy settings are available for restricting computer and user settings, and features like AppLocker™ allow businesses to control which applications users can run.

Edited September 21, 2010 by Arthur

[PeteM]

Stupid move in my opinion. I'm having to use Comodo Time Machine on Windows 7 clients now.

 

(Which does appear to be working rather well I might add)

 

You might find this link useful if CTM causes issues

 

How to Recover your Drive, if CTM made it not boot

[ajbritton]

They have got to be joking! Setting up disk protection on SteadyState was a 10 minute job, including the learning curve. Microsoft are now suggesting you should use the tools in MDT 2010 to re-install the computer every night. The MS deployment tools are notoriously complex and impenetrable compared to SteadyState. Surely they are not serious?