Windows® SteadyState

Windows® SteadyState™ 2.5 is now available on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet café, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them.

Windows SteadyState runs on genuine copies of Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, and Windows Vista Starter. And, Windows SteadyState is offered free of charge to Windows Genuine Advantage customers!

Validation Required
Before Windows SteadyState can be installed, you are required to validate that your computer is running genuine Microsoft Windows. As described in the privacy statement, Microsoft will not use the information collected during the validation process to identify or contact you. By running genuine Microsoft Windows®, you can download and install Windows SteadyState, as well as enable certain product features and obtain non-security updates and product support from Microsoft. For more information, see the Windows Genuine Advantage Web site.

SteadyState Helps Make it Easier to Manage Your Shared Computers Shared computers are commonly found in schools, Internet and gaming cafés, libraries, and community centers. It is increasingly common for owners, teachers, or non-technical personnel to manage shared computers in addition to their many other responsibilities.

Managing shared computers can be difficult, technically challenging, time-consuming, and expensive. And what’s more, without system restrictions and protections, users can inadvertently change the desktop appearance, reconfigure system settings, and introduce unwanted software, viruses, and other harmful programs. Repairing damaged shared computers can require significant time and effort.

User privacy is also an issue for shared computer environments. Shared computers often use shared user accounts that make Internet history, saved documents, and cached Web pages available to subsequent users.

Windows SteadyState provides a more effective way to help defend shared computers from changes by untrusted users and unwanted software installations. It can also help safeguard system resources.