Problems with systems running Deep Freeze 8.63 not booting correctly.

On Monday, Nov 1st, Faronics was made aware of some issues where Deep Freeze Cloud customers running the Deep Freeze product were not booting up properly.

Investigation and Findings

Initially, the issue appeared to be related to the most recent Windows Updates as the bulk of the customers who reported this issue ran maintenance tasks over the weekend. As we investigated the issue further, we found that the issue was not related to the Windows Updates(s) applied over the weekend but rather an update we introduced in Deep Freeze Cloud.

On Friday night (Oct 29), Deep Freeze Cloud released an update to provide Server OS support for Deep Freeze. Unfortunately, this update included an incorrectly built driver of our software that would get automatically updated (if an old version is found) by the “self-healing” functionality that Deep Freeze Cloud includes. After the automatic update, the system would become stuck and unable to complete the boot process into Windows.

 

Issue Addressed

On Monday night (Nov 1), our engineers reverted the incorrectly built driver to prevent further spread of this issue. We are implementing additional checks in our build and QA processes to better identify erroneous drivers to avoid this from happening in the future.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this issue may have caused. If you require assistance in getting the issue resolved please feel free to contact Technical Support at support@faronics.com or by submitting a request through our support portal at http://support.faronics.com.

 

Affected Computers

Computers with the following settings were affected:

1. Secure Boot was enabled on the computer.
2. Outdated driver version found and updated by “self-healing” functionality.
3. Under Maintenance Period settings in the policy, the “Automatically upgrade installed services if update is available” option was enabled.
4. Maintenance Period was scheduled between Friday 9pm PST to Monday 9pm PST. 

 

Resolution Steps for Affected Customers

Customers impacted by this issue can resolve the problem by following these steps:

1.       Disable Secure Boot on the client system.
2.       Boot the system into Windows.
3.       From the Deep Freeze Cloud assign a policy that does not have Deep Freeze enabled.
4.       Allow the policy assignment to be complete and for Deep Freeze to be removed.
5.       Reboot the computer and re-enable Secure Boot.
6.       From the Deep Freeze Cloud assign the original policy to the client machine.

Once the original policy is assigned Deep Freeze will be re-installed on the client system.

Update: We have been informed that some customers, mainly those using ThawSpaces will need an updated build of the Deep Freeze installer to be published to resolve the issue fully - this update is in place on the servers as of this morning (11/3/2021) and available for download.