The Download Munkey : A Link A Day ;)

Sandboxie, as its name implies, acts as a sandbox or virtual container in which your Windows application can be run without it writing directly to your registry or hard disk, thereby minimizing the risk of virus or malware infection. Developed by Ronen Tzur, Sandboxie is shareware but has no time limitation.

The usual uses of Sandboxie are to surf the .NET or check your email in a sandbox for added security since any malware and trojans encountered will be trapped inside the sandbox. For me, I mainly use it to run trial applications and games that I download from the .NET, not so much for security purposes but more to minimize the chance of improperly written installers cluttering up the computer.

© Ronen Tzur

Without Sandboxie

© Ronen Tzur

With Sandboxie

From the above diagram, you can see that when your application is run under Sandboxie, all files and registry data which is usually written straight to the hard disk are redirected to a temporary storage area (sandbox). The data in the sandbox remains there until you manually clear it. This redirection of data is totally transparent to the end user so it’s really very easy to use.

After installing Sandboxie, it adds a Run Sandboxed item to your context menu. Simply right-click the application you want to run in a sandbox and click Run Sandboxed and you’re done!

Run an application under Sandboxie is as simple as right-clicking and selecting Run Sandboxed.

Child processes created by the application inside the Sandboxie sandbox are also isolated in the sandbox.

The window titles of all applications running inside a sandbox are surrounded by [#] for easy identification.

After using your application, exit it normally and then right-click the diamond-shaped Sandboxie Control icon in your system tray. Go to Contents of Sandbox and from there you can explore the contents of the sandbox, i.e the files which were orginally supposed to be written to the hard disk, or delete the contents of the sandbox to restore the state of your hard disk and registry back to the original state before you ran the application.

I recommend configuring Sandboxie under Configuration > Global Settings > Set File Copy Options and change Don’t Copy files into the sandbox if they are larger than xxx kilobytes to a larger value if you intend to use Sandboxie to run applications or installers that work with large files.

Read the FAQ, tutorial or download Sandboxie at the official site.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Playing Flash Games Offline
TreeSize Free for keeping track of your hard disk space
Blogger Backup Utility by Greg Duncan