Deep Freeze is a kernel-mode driver. So you need to be able to boot from another drive with a program such as NTFSDOSPRO, CIA Commander, Winternals AdminPak CD, or a Linux NTFS Boot disk. Something that can mount an NTFS drive AND give you a command prompt.
If CMOS is passworded and you can't change the boot sequence to boot from a: or the CD-ROM drive, you can research if the BIOS has a separate key to enter a Boot Menu. Many do. For example, if Del is what takes you into CMOS setup, and it is passworded, locking you out, there may still be a separate key, like F11 which brings up a Boot menu allowing you to select which drive to boot from. Unless it has specifically been disabled in CMOS this will allow you to choose which drive to boot from, even if CMOS is passworded. Research the BIOS, motherboard manual, etc. This is a popular BIOS feature. Another possibility is to boot from the USB drive. This is also a separate feature which must also be separately disabled in the CMOS. I.e., it is not part of the normal boot sequence; it is a separate setting usually called something like, "Allow booting from other devices". Most admins aren't too familiar with these separate features of BIOS. In fact most of the admins I know are quite intimidated by the CMOS setup. It's like the registry. They're scared of it. ;-) One admin I knew could not understand the difference between the CMOS Setup password and the Supervisor PowerOn password. <duhhh>
The next step is to create a Persi0.sys file containing a known password from your own installation of Deep Freeze. Persi0.sys is the settings and password file. On Windows 2000/XP it is located in the root directory. It may have system and hidden attributes too. It maintains three different settings: (1) Which drives are frozen, (2) Frozen or thawed mode, and (3) the password. So, if you replace this file with your own you can control Deep Freeze. You should rename the original to Persi0.bak just in case. Don't delete it either or Deep Freeze will remain permanently frozen. And Persi0.sys is more than 1.44MB. It was designed that way so it won't fit on a floppy. So you'll have to use a USB thumb drive. OR, you can zip it up and put it on a floppy, then unzip it and put it on the d: drive of the computer if it has one. If you zip it up, it will fit on a floppy. Or, email it to yourself, unzip it, and download it to the d: drive (again, if there is one).
It is not recommended to attempt manual removal of Deep Freeze. It is too complicated. You will more than likely screw up the computer. Even if you delete the references to it in the registry, and the driver and the service, it's not enough. Just replace the password file with your own, then you can enter thawed mode and use the DeepFreezeSTDEval.exe file to uninstall Deep Freeze. You must execute the setup file to both install and uninstall Deep Freeze. You won't find it under Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel. So you'll need a copy of it too (link given above).
Good Luck! If you succeed with this, you're pretty good!
