Hey guys,

I've just ordered a laptop with Vista Ultimate and I'd really like to tweak everything the way I like, install the applications I want and then 'lock everything down' so nothing can change in certain directories - even if something is running with administrator privileges, write access will be denied.

In UNIX, all the system settings are kept in a handful of locations and by mounting these file systems 'read only' at boot I can guarantee that the system files don't change day in, day out. Is there any similar way of doing this in Vista? Also, I want to be able to 'unlock' the system files every now & then to install new software & updates. I've looked at products like 'Deep Freeze' but they're very expensive and I'd rather things couldn't be modified in the first place than performing what amounts to periodic disk imaging.

Any advice/workaround appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help. :)