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Thanks Michael! :) We're not running a picture slide show but we will be running IE8. Anyone else with older hardware and your experiences with DF? The gx240's are a 1.4 GHZ with 512 of RAM. We can upgrade the RAM with surplus sticks but I am now a little worried about these old OPAC's.... We haven't had a chance yet to produce a lab and I will certainly make sure we toss a couple of them in there. Thanks, Gretchen Garcia MCLD IT Services [log in to unmask] http://www.mcldaz.org "There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't." =) ________________________________ From: Library NT [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Wofsey Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 2:46 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: More deep freeze questions ;) The computers sometimes get stuck in DF maintenance mode. You cannot reset them or restart them or do anything from the console. Usually a web page is displayed in IE7, but you cannot type anything and clicking the mouse produces no response. Often one of our screen saver slides will be stuck but there may be a part of IE showing on the bottom of the screen. The only thing you can do is to hold in the power key for 10 seconds to force the power off, then power it on, wait for it to restart at which time it will immediately shut down again because it thinks it is coming out of its maintenance period. After all this, which can easily take 7 minutes with one of these old machines, you then have to press the power button once more to start the machine a final time. Usually then it will be okay for a while, but can get frozen again with a non-responsive keyboard or mouse at any time during the day. We have found that it happens more often on certain computers, not every single one of this model. By the way, I was able to up the RAM from 512 MB to 1 GB in all of these computers but that did not help this problem at all. Finally, I had to uninstall Deep Freeze Ent. from all of these computers and they work fine now. I don't know if you would experience this if you were not running the My Pictures Slideshow screensaver on these or similar computers, and it may not be a problem if you are running something less than IE7. I believe I did run DFE on a couple of 270s for a while with no problems. I think I could have solved my problem by removing the screensaver and leaving DFE, but since these were OPACs with very limited Internet Access, I decided that risks to the hard drive and system were less important than the things we were trying to advertise and promote on the screensavers. In general, I think DFE is a superb product and I just renewed my 135 license. But chances are I will be able to upgrade all of these old computers in the next year. Also, I should say that I did not bother to call Faronics to seek support on this issue so I don't know if they would have been able to help. My attitude was: these are old machines and I'm pushing my luck anyway with them, not worth spending hours or days tracking down the source of the problem. Michael Wofsey Assistant Director for Technology Public Library of Brookline 361 Washington St. Brookline, MA 02445 617-730-2348 (desk), 617-799-8529 (mobile) [log in to unmask] http://brooklinelibrary.org -----Original Message----- From: Gretchen Garcia - LIBRARY <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:32:53 -0700 Subject: Re: [LIBNT-L] More deep freeze questions ;) Going on the tangent of old machines... 98% of our express catalog machines are gx240's. At this point I can't upgrade. (Not for lack of trying!) We don't have any 260's in public service but we do have a few 270's and many many 280's. Can you give me some more information on this "bad state" problem? :) Thanks, Gretchen Garcia MCLD IT Services [log in to unmask] From: Library NT [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Wofsey Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 8:30 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: More deep freeze questions ;) I use Deep Freeze widely, on both public and staff machines (we have roaming profiles and re-directed user folders, so nothing is on the local computer). I use the Enterprise version so I can manage my 135 machines from a single console, and love the ease of re-starting, waking-on-lan, etc. from the console. I like that so much that even on a few machines that I need to leave unfrozen because they have programs that need to write to the local drive, I install DeepFreeze and unfreeze the machine just so I can shut them down or start them up from the console. The one problem I have had with the Enterprise edition is that it seems to cause problems with our oldest computers (Dell Optiplex GX260's), which we are still using as OPAC's. I'm not sure what aspect of Deep Freeze causes the problem, perhaps the network polling, but those older computers frequently get into a bad state and have to be forceably restarted several times to get them out of it. But frankly, we are really pushing our luck by still trying to run these old workhorses, so I don't blame Deep Freeze for the problem. The other factor that seems to contribute to the unstability of these systems is that we run the My Pictures Screensaver on them, with images stored on a server. We do this to advertise events and new services, so that is another thing that perhaps overloads the network traffic to those almost ancient computers. I also run JAWS and Kurzweil 1000 on one computer with Deep Freeze and have never had a problem with it. Michael Wofsey Assistant Director for Technology Public Library of Brookline 361 Washington St. Brookline, MA 02445 617-730-2348 (desk), 617-799-8529 (mobile) [log in to unmask] http://brooklinelibrary.org -----Original Message----- From: James Guilford <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 02:40:58 GMT Subject: Re: [LIBNT-L] More deep freeze questions ;) We have several installations of JAWS and DeepFreeze doesn't interfere with them. DeepFreeze doesn't seem to have any negative effects on any software I can think of providing permanent changes are not required for routine operation of that software. Even then, as you've read, a "thawed" drive can be created where permanent changes are allowed. DeepFreeze is so transparent to OS operations that, should you forget to thaw your Program Files drive as Administrator, you could run through a program installation successfully only to find your work wiped clean on system restart! ---------------------------------------------- James Guilford, I.T. Manager Westlake Porter Public Library -----Original Message----- From: "Gretchen Garcia - LIBRARY" <[log in to unmask]> Sent 4/5/2010 7:18:21 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [LIBNT-L] More deep freeze questions ;) Do any of you have Deep Freeze running with JAWS? Does it work? :-) What about Kurzweil 3000? Thanks, Gretchen Garcia MCLD IT Services [log in to unmask] http://www.mcldaz.org "There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't." =)