Drive Vaccine

Drive Vaccine is a software application developed by Horizon DataSys^[2] for Microsoft Windows that restores PCs back to a predefined configuration (or baseline) set by system administrators. It’s designed specifically for unattended PC management environments such as internet cafés, schools, kiosks, libraries, etc.; anywhere where there's a need for an automated restore-on-reboot type utility that undoes any changes made by public users.<ref name=CNET_Editor's_Review>"CNET Staff Review (February 27, 2009)". Retrieved 2012-12-18. </ref>

With Drive Vaccine the public access computer continually reverts to this preset baseline every time the public user restarts, logs out, on some specified fixed schedule, or after a period of inactivity. Drive Vaccine also allows administrators to retain an excluded cache of persistent storage space, by creating an Exclusion Drive (formerly called the "Exemption Drive"), in which can be kept each user's personal files and folders that aren't subject to the automated restore.^[3]

Competing Products

Drive Vaccine's main competitors are Fortres Grand's Clean Slate,^[4] Faronics' Deep Freeze,^[5] Shadow Defender,^[6] Centurion Technologies' SmartShield,^[7] System Revert 2011,^[8] HDGUARD,^[9] and Microsoft Windows SteadyState. The main difference with these other restore solutions is that Drive Vaccine doesn't run inside Windows and allows administrators to undo baseline updates with its "Back-out of Update" Option. There's one baseline that Drive Vaccine constantly reverts to and a fail-safe baseline kept in reserve as a back-up baseline which allows users to instantly recover from a virus infection, or a bad install, etcetera, even a botched Drive Vaccine baseline update. Drive Vaccine's patented sector mapping technology also makes it quicker to create, update, and load the baseline. Since Drive Vaccine sits below Windows it can also recover from a Windows crash that causes the OS to no longer load.^[10]

Operation

With Drive Vaccine the baseline is a sector map record of the harddrive. Since this sector map is not at the Windows file-and-folder level it can't be seen from within Windows. The Drive Vaccine application has two main components: a window-based GUI and an independent subconsole which resides wholly outside Windows.

When attempting to deploy Drive Vaccine using images the image must contain only a partial install of only the GUI component. On the first reboot after installation the subconsole is then installed. If the master image is taken subsequent to the full installation, the image will fail to capture the subconsole and will consequently be only a partial install that will fail to work.^[11]

To complete installation Drive Vaccine writes to the Master Boot Record (MBR) and the install will also fail if it is prevented from doing this. Many anti-virus, disc imaging, and encryption software prevent Drive Vaccine from creating this MBR record. Drive Vaccine will fail to load if the MBR is erased, altered, or bypassed.^[12]

Resets and baseline updates can be managed at the workstation level or remotely via the Remote Management Console (RMC).

See also

• Windows SteadyState
• System Restore
• Deep Freeze (software)

References