Date: 02/18/07 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: software, security

At work, I have some Windows XP systems that are considered to be "kiosks" - that is, they are available to anyone who walks up to them, as a convenience, while they're in my lab. As you can imagine, there's a potential for these systems to get crufted up with people's personal files, extraneous software that people install, they could make configuration changes to the system, and the like. And as it turns out, my company has some IT security rules about systems like this, mandating that on a periodic basis, extraneous files and such must be removed from publicly accessible systems.

What I would like to do with these systems is something like this: partition the drive so that there is a primary partition that Windows boots from, and an additional partition (preferably hidden somehow, so people can't mess with it) on which is a Ghost image (or something similar) of a "fresh install" of the system. Then, on a periodic scheduled basis (maybe once a week, in the middle of the night on a weekend), the system automatically rebuilds itself from the Ghost image, returning itself to a pristine "freshly installed" state, and effectively removing anything that anyone has left there and undoing any configuration changes that they've made.

What is the best way to go about doing something like this? The publicly available computers at the local public library actually do this on a nightly basis (though I think they get their "fresh install" image over the network, rather than from a partition on the hard drive), so I know it's possible. But I don't know where to even look for products that would accomplish this.

Any hints?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/1040201.html