The Windows Sandbox

[ubuysa]

I'm a fairly regular user of the Windows sandbox, it's extremely useful for those of us who often install and evaluate potentially suspect tools and utilities etc., especially when not 100% certain whether the download contains malware or not. It's useful for testing any software install before you actually commit to installing it on your 'real' system and it largely invalidates the need to run a 'testing' virtual machine. It also avoids the all-too-common problem of orphan dll and exe files left behind by a less than thorough uninstaller.

The sandbox is not available in the Home versions of Windows but for those running the Pro/Enterprise/Education versions it's quite a useful, and little understood or appreciated, tool.

Is there any interest in me writing a tutorial on how to activate and make use of the Windows sandbox?

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'm a fairly regular user of the Windows sandbox, it's extremely useful for those of us who often install and evaluate potentially suspect tools and utilities etc., especially when not 100% certain whether the download contains malware or not. It's useful for testing any software install before you actually commit to installing it on your 'real' system and it largely invalidates the need to run a 'testing' virtual machine. It also avoids the all-too-common problem of orphan dll and exe files left behind by a less than thorough uninstaller.

The sandbox is not available in the Home versions of Windows but for those running the Pro/Enterprise/Education versions it's quite a useful, and little understood or appreciated, tool.

Is there any interest in me writing a tutorial on how to activate and make use of the Windows sandbox?

It’s definitely an extremely handy tool, I think a guide would be superb.

A lot of users here buy for home business use and so have pro windows, I’m sure they’d appreciate a guide.

A lot of people don’t realise it’s a feature I think

 

[HomerJ]

Is there any interest in me writing a tutorial on how to activate and make use of the Windows sandbox?

yep,

homer has used windows sandbox in the past, from what homer can remember its like having a fresh windows install that deletes everything everytime you close it but you can as you say run software your not sure of etc, cool tool.

 

[Scott]

Sandbox is fantastic. I think having a guide on the forum from a more avid user would be very welcome

 

[ubuysa]

I'll tell you want's not fantastic - this forum!

I've just spent over an hour typing up a tutorial only to run into the 'Oops we ran into a problem' message. No amount of fiddling will get past that message - which crops up way too often. I contribute to many fora and this is the only one that suffers from this VERY annoying 'feature'.

I'll come back another day. I need a stiff drink now.....

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'll tell you want's not fantastic - this forum!

I've just spent over an hour typing up a tutorial only to run into the 'Oops we ran into a problem' message. No amount of fiddling will get past that message - which crops up way too often. I contribute to many fora and this is the only one that suffers from this VERY annoying 'feature'.

I'll come back another day. I need a stiff drink now.....

It’s normally down to formatting of some kind.

smilies often trigger it, but it can be just simple bold or italics or font colour. It is extremely annoying

 

[HomerJ]

many thanks @ubuysa very cool info

 

[ubuysa]

Can we add this to the Knowledge Base Sandbox thread too please...

Windows Store Apps

At the moment the sandbox does not contain the Windows Store and so it's not possible to test install Windows Store apps in the sandbox. If you do a web search you'll find several different hacks that will install the Windows Store into the sandbox so that you can test install Windows Store apps.

I'm not providing any of those links and I'm not recommending any of the techniques either, for the reasons below...

- You will of course need to install the Windows Store every time you start the sandbox, which partly defeats the ease of use of the sandbox.
- These hacks are unsupported by Microsoft and I don't believe it's wise to be running unsupported hacks in a testing environment.
- There will be valid reasons why the Windows Store is not (yet) included in the sandbox, these are probably undocumented.
- Installing a Windows Store app is a simple 'one-click' process. Uninstall is similarly simple with far less chance of orphaned files.
- Like all app stores, apps need top pass a number of checks to be included in the Windows Store, so there is far less chance of them containing malware.

 

[Scott]

Done!

Updated here for all:

The Windows Sandbox Guide

I'm posting this a topic at a time to tray and pacify the forums software. The Mods may want to move this to the Knowledge Base perhaps? What Is The Sandbox? The Windows sandbox is a temporary virtual machine, created automatically, with a single virtual disk (the C: drive of course) and a...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

 

[ubuysa]

A couple more points. Although I'm a longish-term user of the sandbox it's only writing the tutorial that has caused me to find the limits of what it can do, and what it can't.

I did try one of the hacks for installing the Windows Store in the sandbox, it took several minutes to install (probably due in large part to my 12Mbps Internet connection), but it did work and I was able to install several Windows Store apps in the sandbox - and they worked ok.

I also downloaded an anti-virus tool to ensure that the Windows Store hack hadn't itself introduced malware and nothing was found. My first choice for this was Malwarebytes and I discovered to my surprise that Malwarebytes will not install into the sandbox. You get a message saying that it can't be installed on this computer. I assume the sandbox is so stripped down that features that Malwarebytes requires are not present. In the end I used TotalAV, not that I'm recommending it.

 

[TonyCarter]

Is something like VMWare Workstation a suitable alternative for this - and maybe simper?

I was a long time user of VirtualPC and VMWare Fusion on Macs for Windows virtualisation.