Christina/Michelle-- At the Dearborn Public Library we use a combination of Deep Freeze and Group Policy Settings and a few Registry edits to lock down the public PCs, catalogs, and laptops (for in-house checkout only). Deep Freeze is a reboot-to-restore program, so once you have your computer's image setup the way you like it, you just activate the Freeze capability and any changes (i.e. login information, browser history, etc.) is removed on reboot (reboot to restore functionality). I'm the computer guy here tasked with building staff and public images for our various computers. Along with Deep Freeze, we also use Active @ Disk Image software (running from a 128GB USB 3.0 flash drive) to capture "images" of the finalized hard drive that can be quickly deployed back to the original computer or another unit of the same model (i.e. Dell OptiPlex 7020 desktop, Dell Latitude 5520 laptop). Worse case scenario, 5-15 minutes later, you reimage the "hosed" computer and you're back in business. Michelle-- Regarding remembering login information (so that the computer can login to a generic "public" user account upon bootup), that is just a few registry entries/changes. Type "regedit.exe" from command prompt/Windows Run. Browse to "Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon". Check for the following keys, and if they're not already there, add them as New/String Value keys: Name Type Data AutoAdminLogin REG_SZ 0 (if you don't want it to automatically login upon boot), 1 (if you do want auto-login) DefaultUserName REG_SZ (whatever your generic user account name is, i.e. "public" or "user") DefaultDomainName REG_SZ (whatever your library's shortened domain name is, i.e. "LIBRARY") (if your computer isn't joined to a domain, you can put the local machine name in this field, i.e. "LAPTOP-PUBLIC") DefaultPassword REG_SZ (whatever your generic user account's password is, i.e. "P@ssw0rd") Assuming everything is correct, the computer should auto-login going forward after you reboot it after making these changes to the registry. Word of wisdom: edit the registry at your own risk. Deleting entries or changing them to invalid values might potentially make Windows unbootable. Be sure to have a backup before making changes. Here's a help page from Microsoft that explains how to do what I just mentioned: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/user-profiles-... City of Dearborn Dennis Jameson Library System Administrator Automation Henry Ford Centennial Library djameson@dearborn.gov On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 11:39 AM Michelle via Michlib-l < michlib-l@liblists.org> wrote:
You are not the only one. I am in the same boat. I actually need to purchase some more to add to our fleet but am not sure the best way to do this. We also have issues with remembering login information and we have a deep freeze on all of them but I still can’t get it to work properly.
Michelle Duclos, Director
Frankenmuth Wickson District Library
359 S. Franklin Street
Frankenmuth, MI 48734
989-652-8323
www.wicksonlibrary.org
Never Underestimate The Big Importance of Small Things ~ Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
*From:* Christina via Michlib-l <michlib-l@liblists.org> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 11, 2026 11:27 AM *To:* michlib-l@liblists.org *Subject:* [Michlib-l] laptops for checkout
Hello! Do any of you who lend laptops have to support them on your own? We don't have IT support to manage our fleet of laptops, nor do we have a large budget, so we've purchased relatively cheap laptops. While they are working just fine for now, we are finding it more difficult to keep them up to date and to maintain the ability for students to check them out and remove identifying information upon return. As laptops become more personalized, it's harder and harder to keep them from remembering login information. How do you all do that? Or, are we the only library without IT support or a budget for special software?
Thanks in advance!
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*Christina Radisauskas | Library Director* *Aquinas College* 1700 Fulton St E *|* Grand Rapids, MI 49506 616-632-2124 | radischr@aquinas.edu
she/her/hers
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