Might I offer an alternative? A little Off-Topic (Score 1)

I have been using a Windows XP setup based around Faronic's Deep Freeze for the past few months now and my system is, for the most part, "bulletproof". (Believe me... I also cringe whenever anyone uses that phrase unintelligently, but until I see otherwise, this is how I term this setup)

Let me start with a little understanding of what exactly Deep Freeze does... because this is the part that I didn't grasp fully until a few months ago. It can setup a drive, or drives on your system to be what is called "frozen". Frozen meaning any changes done to the system are removed upon next boot.

The altered state of frozen is what is termed appropriately as "Thawed". Thawed meaning any changes done to thawed drives are retained.

My setup is quite simple. I have a 3 drive, 4 partition setup, which is arranged as follows:

• C:\ System Drive (frozen)
• G:\ Games Drive (thawed)
• P:\ Program Files Drive (thawed)
• S:\ Storage Drive (thawed)

The system drive is the only frozen drive, all information that I would need to change on a regular to semi-regular basis is moved onto other drives.

• All games are installed onto the games drive while in thawed mode, allowing for limited changes to the registry
• Program Files is physically moved onto the P:\ drive through registry hacking, and again all programs are installed in thawed mode also.
• My Documents is moved permanently to the S:\ Drive
  • I have my Outlook mail store in a folder inside of My Documents, allowing for any new mail to be retained.
• All Firefox bookmarks are saved offsite to my personal server using Foxmarks
• AVG is installed on the C:\ Drive, along with other antimalware programs.
  • They update daily, but I have a weekly regimen to repeat in thawed mode and make sure all programs updates are kept.
• Defragmenting your system drive is something that rarely needs to happen.
• You retain that fresh version of Windows XP, without having to reinstallâ¦
• I also fully utilize my flash drives for random crap.

So if all of my files I need are moved onto other drives, and I have a frozen system, barring physical drive failure, almost any software change I do not want to happen, can easily be repaired by rebooting.

Thus the reason I call this my "bulletproof" setup.

Please offer your comments. :)