[SOLVED:] Installing Deepfreeze on Windows 7 Virtual Hard Disk

So I tested running windows 7 on a virtual hard disk on a couple of machines in my computer shop. I found an online tutorial to install a windows boot system from a VHD. It got my attention because of how easy to do backup. Just copy the entire win7.vhd file to a backup drive and its done! I also like that it creates a separate partition for the operating system aside from the game disk partition. This is ideally a requirement in a computer shop environment wherein the operating system in installed on a separate partition and locked-down with deep-freeze and another partition that contains games and other apps that are constantly needs updating.

Deep-freeze is a special type of a windows application that locks a partition or partitions from changes. It is like making the partition read-only. The users are able to use the computer normally and can save files and make changes to the system, but everything reverts back to its original state when the computer is restarted.

Deep-freeze worked fine in my computer shop until I tested it on a windows system on a VHD. I initially thought that it will work flawless because it is still the same windows version that I used and residing on a separate partition, as it did on my old setups. I later found out that there are user files on the desktop even when deep-freeze is enabled. I deleted those files and rebooted and the change persisted even after rebooting. It is then i concluded that deep-freeze will not work on a VHD boot partition.

My solution is to revert back to my old setup of having windows 7 installed and running on a separate logical partition instead of using VHD.

In summary, deepfreeze will not work on a windows virtual hard disk.

Windows 2016 Server: A File Sharing Server with a Surprise

I was excited to evaluate Windows 2016 Server, especially its built-in disk de-duplication and ISCSI-target server features. I turned my test machine into a file server on a gigabit network, and everything worked as expected. But then I encountered a serious bottleneck when accessing and transferring network-shared files. There was a noticeable delay in accessing and transferring files to and from the test server.

I was puzzled. I tried everything I could think of to fix the problem, but nothing worked. Finally, I decided to uninstall every bit of feature and install one feature at a time. That's when I discovered the culprit: the "SMB bandwidth limit" feature.

The SMB bandwidth limit feature is designed to help administrators control and set bandwidth limits on SMB traffic. But in my case, it was actually causing the bottleneck. Once I uninstalled the feature, everything worked out fine. The file access and transfer was noticeably better.

I learned a valuable lesson from this experience: always check all the features of a new piece of software, even if you don't think you need them. Sometimes, a seemingly harmless feature can actually cause problems.

Here are some tips for troubleshooting file sharing problems in Windows 2016 Server:

• Check the network configuration. Make sure that the network is properly configured and that the file server is properly connected to the network.
• Check the file permissions. Make sure that the user has the correct permissions to access the files.
• Check the disk space. Make sure that there is enough disk space available on the file server.
• Check the network bandwidth. Make sure that the network bandwidth is sufficient for file sharing.
• Check the SMB bandwidth limit feature. Make sure that this feature is not enabled.
• If you're still having trouble, you can contact Microsoft support for help.