If you are a developer or just someone who wants to test their application in a clean Windows environment, you might want to use Windows Sandbox. It is a lightweight desktop environment to safely run applications in isolation. In this post, we are going to see how you can set up, install, and test software in Sandbox on Windows 11/10.
Install and run Software in Sandbox on Windows 11
To install and test Software in Sandbox in Windows 11/10, follow the steps mentioned below.
- Set up Windows Sandbox
- Copy the installation media
- Install the program
Let us talk about them in detail.
1] Set up Windows Sandbox
When you create software from scratch and want to test it, you can not use your preinstalled operating system. Your OS might have some drivers needed for the program to run or might lack some. That’s where Windows Sandbox comes into play. It provides a fresh environment, something your customers might have when installing your application. To enable Windows Sandbox, follow the steps mentioned below.
- Open the Control Panel by searching it out of the Start Menu.
- Change the View by to Large icons.
- Go to Programs and features.
- Click on Turn Windows features on or off.
- Now, look for Windows Sandbox, tick its checkbox, and click on Ok.
It might take some time for Windows Sandbox to install. Once done, you can open it by searching “Windows Sandbox” from the Start Menu. When you launch it, Windows Sandbox will look for updates and try to install them on your computer. Once done, Sandbox will launch on your computer. The best part about Sandbox is that the moment you close it, all the changes you have made will be deleted. You can try closing it and getting a prompt to acknowledge that.
If you are using Windows 11 Home, you need to create and run a bat file to install Windows Sandbox on your computer. After executing the script, you can enable Windows Sandbox using the steps mentioned earlier.
Read: How to configure and use Windows Sandbox.
2] Copy the installation file
Even though Windows Sandbox can download the software if you want to test the software hosted on the web, you can also copy the software present on the host computer and paste it inside the Sandbox environment.
For example, we have freeware called FixWin 11, which is the one of best Windows repair tools that you can use.
We downloaded the ZIP from the mentioned hyperlink. To move it to the environment, all you need to do is right-click on the ZIP folder, select Copy, go to the Sandbox environment, navigate to the location where you want to store the file, and select Paste.
Once you have pasted the file inside the Sandbox environment, you can just right-click on it, and select Extract.
When downloading programs from the web, there is a browser inside the Sandbox environment that you can use to do the same. However, to make the environment more secure, many users tend to disable the network. You can do the same by creating a .wsb file using Notepad that contains the following script.
<Configuration>
<Networking>Disable</Networking>
</Configuration>
Once you run the script, your Sandbox device will not be able to communicate with any other device or connect to the network.
3] Install the program
Now that we have copied the installation media from the host machine to the Sandbox machine, we can install the program. Since it is nothing but a Windows environment, the installation process will be the same, however, the only difference is, that the filesystems will be different. So, since it is not a permanent environment, a temporary account will be created. During the installation process as well as the extraction process, you will see that the program is not installing or extracting to your usual location.
The whole process will be the same. With the help of this tutorial, you can install the application and then test it on a fresh slate.
When you close the Sandbox environment, you will see a prompt stating that any changes made to the environment will be reverted so that you will get a clean slate the next time you want to use it.
Read: How to enable Windows Sandbox in VirtualBox guest OS
How do I run a program in sandbox Windows 11?
To run any program in Windows Sandbox, all you need to do is copy and paste the installation media from the host machine to the Sandbox environment and then install the application. Once the program is installed, you can then use it just like any other program on a Windows 11 computer.
Read: Virtualization support is disabled in the firmware
Why is there no Windows Sandbox in Windows 11?
Windows Sandbox is unavailable by default on a Windows machine; instead, you must install the feature. However, this feature is absent on Windows 11 Home; therefore, you need to follow the guide linked earlier to get Sandbox on Home devices.
Also Read: Windows Sandbox failed to initialize.