Do you know of any alternatives to Deep Freeze, Shadow User, and Windows SteadyState?
To protect my PC from viruses and other malware without the use of any antivirus which takes up system resources.
Answer
Sandboxie is certainly a less draconian/restrictive approach, yet no less effective.
Sandboxie is freeware although the 'real fun' starts with the registered version, forcibly run programs sandboxed, create multiple sandboxes, etc. (and you may install Sandboxie on any computer you own with one license).
I use both Sandboxie and Deep Freeze quite frequently, and they're both excellent solutions. Sandboxie does not support Windows x64, Deep Freeze does.
Returnil Virtual System 2010 (a combination of anti-virus and virtualization software) is another free (for personal use) alternative to DeepFreeze. (works with ALL Windows versions since XP, x86 & x64)
Horizon DataSys offer a variety of similar programs, such as Drive Vaccine (Automated PC Restore), RollBack RX and Executable Lockdown.
And speaking of Horizon, they bought a very interesting product (first they crippled it and then killed it altogether): with First Defense ISR you could take system snapshots (akin to snapshots of a VM) and boot to any of them. Any snapshot could be used as a live system or could be reverted to any previous snapshot state ... like keeping a jukebox of system drives and being able to choose any of them from a preboot menu.
BufferZone (pretty much like ShadowUser) creates an isolated zone on your PC, which separates your operating system and confidential data from unknown programs.
Having said all that, only Deep Freeze and Drive Vaccine (and indeed the demised FDISR) truly lock down the system to the very last byte. All other products are using virtualization, one way or other.
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