[WEB4LIB] do public PCs with Deep Freeze still need virus protection?

[Julia Schult]

Deep Freeze will fix the machine, but only when you restart it.  Therefore, if
a person gets a virus on the machine and other people use it (with a floppy or
to send a file) before the problem is noticed, they may spread the virus.  I
keep Norton AntiVirus on our machines, but am lax about updating it because
Deep Freeze will prevent the worst problems and hardly anyone is using
removable devices in our machines.  (Also, NAV is not causing any problems on
our machines.)  If your machines are used for both email and word processing, I
would say you need to keep standard virus protection going as well as using
Deep Freeze.

p.s. I've said this before, but Deep Freeze is a *great* product that has cut
my troubleshooting time way down!

---Julia E. Schult
Access/Electronic Services Librarian
Elmira College
Jschult at elmira.edu

Donna Stewart wrote:

> We're in the process of configuring PCs for a new public lab, and we're
> having the usual problems getting McAfee (for which the university has a
> site license) to behave with MSOffice products.  I just ran across this
> message from a few weeks ago:
>
> >>> from Jeanne Heicher 09/13/00 06:13AM >>>
> "We use Deep Freeze... It doesn't matter what patrons do at the
> station anymore, and this includes putting a virus on the machine-
> just reboot, and it's gone again."
>
> Is this the general consensus?  We're going to be using Deep Freeze for the
> first time on these machines.  Do we need to use a virus scanner too, or
> will Deep Freeze really take care of any damage that could be done?  Seems
> too good to be true.
>
> thanks in advance
> Donna Stewart
> Cleveland State University Library
> d.stewart at csuohio.edu

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