JULY 2019 PCWorld 113Because
Windows Sandbox
isn’t run as a virtual
machine, but as an
app, there’s not as
much of a
performance hit on
your PC as a true
virtual machine. (If
you’d like to know
more about the
technical
underpinnings of
Sandbox, check
out Microsoft’s
support page (go.pcworld.com/undr). But
be aware that Sandbox is going to take a
chunk of your PC’s resources for its own
use, including a portion of the CPU,
memory, and disk space. If your PC is
already pokey, both it and the Sandbox
virtual PC will run even more slowly.
Sandbox’s app status also benefits you if
you ever want to interact with any files you
may have downloaded. A Hyper-V virtual
machine isolates the file system so that
malware can’t escape. Any files you want to
copy out of a Hyper-V VM requires a Remote
Desktop connection or Enhanced Session
Mode. Normal people don’t want to deal
with any of that! Sandbox simply allows you
to cut and paste (or copy) any file on it right
to your “real” desktop. That’s very handy if
the utility you were testing turns out to be
useful after all.
I didn’t notice any bugs or crashes
associated with Sandbox, with one
exception. If you’re having trouble
accessing the Internet from within Windows
Sandbox, as I did, you may want to tweak
your firewall settings to allow access to the
Sandbox apps, or simply adjust your global
protection settings.
Windows Sandbox won’t tell you if a
dodgy program is secretly sending
information back to a third-party server,
or whether some other pernicious activity
is taking place without your knowledge.
(Advanced users could monitor network
traffic if they desired, however.) But if that
file a “friend” sent you turns out to be
ransomware, it won’t do any harm in
Sandbox.This is how much storage Windows assigned to Windows Sandbox, with 132
GB free on our Surface Laptop test machine.