Windows SteadyState Returns Your PC to Normal
If you have a shared access computer, it can be aggravating when other users make a bunch of changes to the settings. Today we take a look at SteadyState for Windows Vista and XP which lets you return the computer to the original state after a user session.
Windows SteadyState
Not only does SteadyState return the PC back to its original state, but you can set it up to restrict what the user can access. You can lock down virtually every aspect of the computer from programs to websites and more. Of course you’ll need to be the administrator, and the first thing to do is install current drivers and Windows Updates. Then install programs and configure settings you want to how you want the machine to be every time it’s restored. Once everything is set up and you create different user account, you can let the public have at it. Any changes they make to the configuration will be undone just by restarting the machine. Here we take a look at SteadyState running on a Windows XP machine.
When you install SteadyState you’ll need to validate your copy of windows with Genuine Advantage. If you don’t have the WGA tool already on your machine you will be prompted to download and install it.
Add and Restrict a New User
When SteadyState starts you’ll get an overview of User Settings and Global Computer Settings. Now the fun part begins, you can make access as strict of lenient as you want.
In the first part of the SteadyState wizard, add the username, password, and picture. Notice you can create the user on the system drive or an alternate partition or drive.
In the next step you’ll start with General settings and adjust the time the user can spend on the system. Make sure to lock the profile so they can’t make permanent changes themselves.
In Windows Restrictions you can restrict them from several aspects of the OS. You can set the restrictions from High, Medium, Low, none or customize them according to your needs. You can hide certain drives from the user as well, so they can’t mess around with any data on them.
In Feature Restrictions you can lock down Internet access through IE and program menus and settings. The cool feature here is you can set the user home page and also create a Whitelist of sites they will have access to.
In the Block Programs section you determine which programs a user can access.
Windows Disk Protection helps protect system settings and data on the drive where the OS is installed. It is turned off by default and to turn it on click Protect the Hard disk.
In the next screen you can turn it on and to complete the process a restart is required.
After the restart you can choose a level of protection for the disk from always removing changes, retaining them temporarily, or allowing all changes.
You can change the cache file size if you need to free up disk space. The minimum amount of space you can use is 2GB.
Schedule Windows Updates and other program updates. You can also use your own script to schedule a time.
Getting this to work in Windows 7 is rather tricky. I installed it using compatibility mode on Windows 7 32-bit, however not everything worked. Right now I see no official support for it. They were going to include a similar feature but it was scrapped. If you still have a public XP or Vista machine however, it is still a great choice.
![2222-11-19-[21-15-56]](http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/22221119211556.png "2222-11-19-[21-15-56]")
Conclusion
This is a great program for a public computer at a coffee shop, at a school, a library or just from keeping your young ones messing things up. It officially works with XP and Vista…Maybe some of you have gotten it to work on Windows 7? Leave a comment and let us know.
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This sounds like a great program, especially if you have to temporarily share your computer with someone that you think may do some things to it they shouldn’t. It’s really a shame that it does not support Windows 7. Hopefully that’ll change.
Thanks for the review. I wanted one such software for a long time
Does this work under a domain enviornment? I have to delprof the computers every 3 months and somthing like this will really help
Yeah, I ran it in compatibility mode in Windows 7 32-bit but half of it didn’t work. Whenever I click on a user, it asks me to type the password, even they didn’t have a password. I decided to not type anything and I got an error message. I set a password for that user, did the same steps again, and I still got an error. When I decided to login to another user than mine, I got an error from Windows saying that the service that logs in has failed. Even after I uninstalled the SteadyState software, I still got that error. I did a System Restore, and I STILL got that error! Help!
where do you go to d/l this program
@Dave:
http://www.microsoft.com/windo.....fault.mspx
I included the link in the article as well. Thanks for pointing that out.
Hey Geek,
Can you please help me with my problem?
Coo, it’s like a free, more robust Deep Freeze.
I installed this software, and looks great to control kids activity at home. But the “switch user” feature which is usually present at start on Vista DISAPPEARED!. Fortunately, I could find the missing registry on the web (after spending more than an hour on google to find the right stuff), and now I have Windows Steady state as well as ’switch user’ feature on Vista. I am writing this to warn the people about this feature of steadystate software, which might remove “switch user” feature. I find “switch user” feature very much useful when me, my wife and my son switch the users without the need to log-off.
I looked at this while I was deciding about Returnil. I have a 64-bit Vista computer, and found that SteadyState doesn’t work on 64-bit. However, Returnil does.
hey keshav, i installed windows steady state on windows 7 32 bit ultimate, and so far so good it works fine, and everything returns to normal when i uninstall it, but when i install steady state the switch user button disappears, and i would like to get it back, and want to use staeday stae and have switch user option, you think you can help me fix like you fixed yours…
I’ve been using Steady State for around a year now and it REALLY helps with keeping my kids from screwing up the family computer. I was continually having to undo some problem or other they caused, and now a simple restart fixes everything! Documentation is scarce but it’s not too terribly hard to figure out. I partitioned the main drive and moved the “My Documents” folder for each user into the “D” partition so that simply saving files you want to keep to the “My Documents” folder makes them permanent (since Steady State only locks the “C” drive). Great utility.