QUESTION :
I love the idea of Sandboxie, but unfortunately it isn’t supported on 64-bit systems. What is a good alternative that works on a 64-bit version of Windows Vista or 7? I don’t really care if it’s commercial, as long as it’s not overly expensive.
ANSWER :
Apparently Sandboxie now supports 64-bit Windows. Problem solved.
You could give ICore Virtual Accounts a try, it’s a similar idea. I know it’s a bit different, but you may also want to bite the bullet and look into a fully virtualized environment such as VirtualBox, VMWare or VirtualPC.
Microsoft will be releasing Windows XP Mode, along with a new version of Virtual PC, on Thursday. You might want to give it a try. It’s a more transparent method of virtualization than VMware in that, once you have it set up, you can just run your apps in the XP VM just as you would any app that’s installed directly on the Windows 7 host.
Just remember, you’re machine must support hardware virtualization in order for it to work.
I’ve tried the Windows XP Mode, but it requires you to go into the BIOS to enable hardware virtualization. In some cases, most PC’s don’t even come with the ability to support hardware virtualization.
I’ve spent several hours cleaning spyware and viruses from my little brother’s computer. I took off the crappy Norton Antivirus software and installed Kaspersky Internet Security 2010. This is probably one of the best anti-virus software currently (although, I’m not too fond of its firewall capabilities).
It has a similar Sandboxie clone called ‘safe run’, which allows you to run applications in a similar fashion Sandboxie does. The only problem with ‘safe run’ is that it’s hard to tell if an application is running inside a sandbox because there are no visible indicators.
In Sandboxie, you see a [#] symbol wrapped around a sandboxed application to tell you it’s being executed inside a sandbox, but using ‘safe run’ doesn’t show you any indicators whatsoever. If you decide to use software-based virtualization, it does slow down your PC a bit and the virtualized OS will lag (if your PC isn’t up to specifications). Sadly, nobody wants to spend extra time, reinstalling an OS in a VMware environment and utilizing additional resources just so you can sandbox your Internet Explorer or whatever for browsing the Internet for porn or naughty things.