Faronics Deep Freeze went belly up 3 days on support with no love

[nspireing]

so i recently took a position managing a schools systems network, and one project I took over halfway was updating over 2000 machines. Fun right. Well a little over a week into this project Deep freeze throws me this error "Access violation at address 77bf334f in module "NTDLL.DLL". Read of address 00000004". so i close the program and reboot. The program would not see any of the computers. I let it sit for an hour hoping it was just taking a while rebuilding its list, with no love.

I remotley started a lab because i needed to get work done and i could still do it manually and pow it sprung to life. I went to access it again and same error. another reboot and i installed the console on my work machine and its working fine for a while. i end up having to reboot the server every 30 minutes or so to keep this other console working.

At this point i call support. they remote in try a few things reinstall all of deep freeze. I have my Config code so were good. it comes up and same errors. The day comes to an end and i await word tomorrow.

i come in the next day and the console on my machine is working like a dream i start noticing some machines are old or dont have the license so as im going im updating this and everything works great. I go back to support chat with some generic questions and get a rude insulting person who from about a few minutes in is refusing to do anything unless i run windows updates. im told my 2008 R2 server with SP1 is to service packs behind and they wont help me until my 2008 R2 sp1 is sp3............... they hang up on me and i contact support again because R2 has no SP3. i tell the next guy that i was unhappy with the service and he asks me a few questions and says he will send me a ticket # and that he wants X information reply to the ticket # email. by end of business they never emailed me. But i did finally hear back from the first guy i was talking to that they finally got what i sent the day before.

So here i am with a console that is not working anymore not on the server or the console i installed on my machine. And i have hit the end of Faronics script so i dont think people want to talk to me. And all of this started with the above error. Nothing has changed on the network, no new rules no new updates, no new servers, nothing on the firewall. im not getting reports of any switch issues or any errors at all knock on wood.

does anyone have experience with Deep freeze going nuclear? i have limited experience with running deep freeze. Ver 8.23.220.4837

[rubberman]

It probably isn't Deep Freeze but more likely a hardware problem such as a failing memory chip.

[JerryHorner]

Story here isn't just about Deep Freeze going belly up but that you've received no word from their support staff. I mean that's unacceptable by any standard! I mean uninstalling and reinstalling might've been a good idea but sounds like there's some problems in their support structure. Funny enough I used Deep Freeze for many years and was quite happy with it, but I too had a few bad experiences and decided to try other software. I use Reboot Restore Rx myself personally (can't go wrong with free but I'd also recommend Shadow Defender and Drive Vaccine. Best of luck either way!

[Cooper_1]

Yikes, sounds like you got the bad end of the tail with their support team! And by the looks of it, they themselves didn't know what to do to solve your problem (other than yell back at you of course). Talk about the customer always being right, eh?

Unfortunate for them, because in reality, deep freeze is actually a very good piece of software. It's main function, to restore one's computer on every reboot, works. But from what I am reading, it may be that something may have gotten corrupted when you were performing a Windows update. Not pulling this outta nowhere, but this actually happened to some of my clients in the past. One of my main problems with this software is the amount of time it can consume. I mean, re-imaging is a real pain.

My advise would be to start looking at other alternatives. I am looking to upgrade on our next budget, and from the word of mouth and research I've been doing, it seems that drive vaccine is a better alternative to deep freeze. No re-imaging needed, and it seems to have a much better integration with Windows and other software updates. My two cents.