Microsoft is about to solve that problem with Windows Sandbox.
Maybe we were even expecting it, but somehow it looks not quite right.
What do you do?
Download and run it and just take the risk?
With things likeransomwarerunning rampant, it’s almost impossible to be too cautious.
Anything extra could skew testing results.
The best solution to both situations is to spin up aVirtual Machine.
This gives you a clean, isolated OS.
If that attachment turns out to be malware, then the only thing it affects is the virtual machine.
Restore it to an earlier snapshot, and you’re good to go.
First, it can be expensive.
And sure, you might get away withnot activating Windows 10, but that limits what you might test.
Second, running a VM at decent performance levels requires reasonably powerful hardware and lots of storage space.
If you make use of snapshots, you might quickly fill up a smaller SSD.
If you use a large HDD, then performance can be slow.
You probably don’t want to use these power hungry resources on a laptop.
And finally, VMs are complicated.
Not exactly something you want to set up just to test out a questionable executable file.
Fortunately, Microsoft has announced a new solution that solves all of these problems at once.
The next time you run Sandbox, it’s back to a clean slate.
Or you could quickly test out a development scenario in a fresh copy of Windows.
Instead, Windows dynamically generates a clean snapshot OS based on the Host OS on your machine.
This makes for an incredibly light image—just 100 MB.
If you don’t use the Sandbox, the image gets compressed to a tiny 25 MB.
And because it’s essentially a copy of your OS, you don’t need a separate license key.
For safety and security, Microsoft makes use of thecontainer conceptit has introduced previously.
Despite those degrees of separation, the host machine and Sandbox do work together.
As needed, the host will reclaim memory from the Sandbox to keep your machine from slowing down.
And the Sandbox is aware of your host machine’s battery levels so that it can optimize power consumption.
It’s feasible to trigger the Sandbox on a laptop on the go.
It provides a fast and safe VM-like solution with far less overhead than a traditional solution.
you’re free to quickly call up, test, and destroy snapshots—then repeat as necessary.
Like all things intensive, better hardware will make this run even more smoothly.
But as shown above, even less powerful hardware should be able to spin up the Sandbox.
The one downside is that not all machines come with Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise.
If you’re using Windows 10 Home, you won’t be able to use Sandbox.
How Do I Get it?
We definitely don’t recommend doing this on your primary PC though.
Unfortunately you might’t get Windows Sandbox quite yet.
It requires Windows 10 build 18301 or higher, which Microsoft hasn’t released yet.
But once that version is available it’s a straightforward affair.
You’ll want to ensure that your BIOS has virtualization capabilities enabled.
Just terminate the program when you’re done, and Sandbox discards all the changes you’ve made.
Related:What Windows 10’s “Optional Features” Do, and How to Turn Them On or Off
