A method and system for modifying, in a combined computing environment, a machine base image having a personalized desktop environment includes executing an operating system associated with a base disk; intercepting, by a filter driver, an instruction from at least one of a plurality of resources to modify a setting stored in at least one of a file system and a registry, the plurality of resources executing inside an isolation environment; storing, in a delta disk, a copy of the modified setting; restarting the operating system; replacing the setting stored in the at least one of the file system and the registry with the copy of the modified setting stored on the delta disk; and restarting at least one operating system process incorporating the modified setting.