Can Sandboxie be used when you install a program or is it only used for running a program? The reason I ask is because I noticed that today's game giveaway evidently makes a lot of changes to the registry which I'm a little concerned about. Maybe it's not a big deal but thought I would ask.
Sandboxie question
(4 posts) (2 voices)-
mikiem2
Moderator1st off it would be easier to try Universal Extractor on the msi file & trying to run the game without a full install, providing you meet the hardware & software prerequisites.
Otherwise what Sandboxie, Time Freeze [Wondershare or Toolwiz apps], win7 Restore Points, Backups, VMs etc. all have in common is that they let you put things back the way they were, & each has it's penalties. VMs, or anything that uses virtual disks are a bit slower than normal, something that redirects any disk writing to a virtual disk is less efficient [slower], whereas backups & Restore Points take longer to restore, & sometimes they don't work. Any of those should work, but each has its price, not necessarily monetary.
Posted 14 years ago # -
mikiem2
ModeratorThe free VirtualBox VM host has better graphics support than Microsoft's Windows Virtual PC [about 95 - 98% of the GOTD games won't run in Windows Virtual PC, though most will start in VirtualBox], but neither would play A Sirius Game because that requires real hardware [like COD & Skyrim] -- there you'd have to use something like Time Freeze, Sandboxie etc., or make a full system backup & try whatever game or app out for a few days. One of the reasons I like having a dual-boot system [I just added win7 rather than replacing XP Pro], is that I can restore a partition backup of win7 I made using Paragon software [from GOTD] in ~ 1/2 an hour after booting into XP Pro. I just have to cross my fingers that whatever I'm trying works out, or that there's nothing on GOTD that I really, really want, since restoring the backup anything I had added would disappear.
There's another option I was considering before hard drive prices skyrocketed, & it's better suited for games -- it has many of the advantages of a VM but uses your real hardware. You can add a disk/partition, or in win7 create & attach a VHD [Virtual Hard Disk or Drive], use the free EasyBCD [from Neosmart] to add it to your boot menu, then add win7 to that. By keeping that install as simple, as minimal as possible, it doesn't take up any more space than a VM, & so is just as fast/easy to restore -- the disadvantage is that you have to reboot to get to it rather than just starting something like VirtualBox. In fact I'm think that the next time I install Windows [win8?], once I get the very basics installed I'll do a disk/partition backup that I can later restore to another partition or VHD.
Windows 8 [preview due 2/29/12] is also supposed to have built-in ways to restore your system that go further than setting a restore point, but even then I'm not sure there will be an ideal way or method to check software out before installing [often more-or-less permanently] to your regular Windows system.
Posted 14 years ago #
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