Deep Freeze. Unfreeze it.

Article Skills Requirements:
Technician: 7

Windows: 5
Linux:5
General: 7


One big mistake you may do believe is wrong.
Deep Freeze CAN become unfrozen, without any prorgam, and ofcourse without knowing the password.
We are talking about the 7.20 version, but as long as deep freeze doesn't know about this post, it may also work on newer versions as well.

The explanation:
Now I will explain what exatly does Deep Freeze.

Deep freeze is a driver. When you boot in frozen mode, it simply loads the driver of deep freeze instead of the NTFS driver (or FAT32 whatever it makes frozen) for the particular disk partition.
This driver simply doesn't exactly save any work on the hard disk.

The hole:
As long as deep freeze is a driver we can simply boot without using it and make changes to the files on the partition.

The way:

1. Get a copy of a linux distribution which supports LiveCD (I use Ubuntu 10.04)
2. Burn it, put it in the tray and then reboot in Linux without installing it.(In these steps you could use a usb stick instead of a CD-ROM. You can find out more about these on http://www.ubuntu.com/)
3. Now you will need to mount the local drive the windows frozen OS is.
4. Next you will need to go to the drivers' folder. Usualy it is: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers"
5. Now find the file called "DeepFrz.sys". As you may have noticed, this is the deep freeze driver's file.
6. Make a backup of it. (Remember you booted on linux so any changes take effect.)
7. Delete the file "DeepFrz.sys".
8. Now find the normal "ntfs.sys" system driver. This is called at boot time in thawed mode.
9. Copy and paste it. Rename it as "DeepFrz.sys"
10. Thats the main of it. Now when the computer tries to boot in frozen mode, it will call the file "DeepFrz.sys" at boot which indeed is the "thawed" driver "ntfs.sys". So now reboot without the LiveCD in the CD-ROM tray.
11. Now run the deep freeze installation file and select "Uninstall". (Edit: Even if you don't uninstall your computer will stay unfrozen.)
12. It should complete wthout problems.

This is risky!! If you do something wrong the computer may boot with a blue screen or not boot at all.
In this case boot back into linux and replace the DeepFrz.sys file with its backup.

NOTE: The reason I made this tutorial difficult to understand is that I do not want everyone to be able to bypass Deep Freeze, because it was quite hard for me to find out so I believe you should know the basics to be able to bypass it.
 IF YOU ARE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH YOUR OWN COMPUTER WITH DEEP FREEZE CONTACT ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I WILL ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS AFTERWARDS AND EXPLAIN BETTER ALL THESE STEPS.
NOTE 2: (Edited) This will work on any deep freeze version up to 7.20.020. I've tested it.


Well thats it, if you need any help I would be grateful to help you unfreeze your computer. Simply comment.
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