Online Armor + Sandboxie = Pain

[speleo]

Just a few notes for other Sandboxie users should they consider using Online Armor's free firewall (v2.1.0.31) with Sandboxie. Be prepared for a world of pain.

The system I was using is a Win2k SP4 box running SBIE 3.21.18. It had an old version of Zonealarm Pro, so I figured it was time to get something new. Comodo would have been my first choice, but v3 is only for XP, so I thought I'd skip the older offering of v2.4 that's still available for Win2k. After some research, I hit on Online Armor v2.1.0.31 (free), which seemed to have good write-ups.

It really was a major world of pain getting anything to work. Some edited "highlights":

1. Sandboxie would come up with SBIE2313 and SBIE2204 errors whenever I tried to start the browser.
2. I tried regressing to SBIE 3.21 and couldn't install it: NSIS Error.
3. My Control Panel wouldn't come up.
4. Windows explorer wouldn't run properly (outside the sandbox)
5. The system would lock for no apparent reason. It then would fail to start up properly some of the time. Even "successful" reboots took for ever and would just stop for a few minutes with no apparent activity.
6. I managed to disable HIPS on Online Armor and made a bit more progress but the system was still way too flakey and SBIE would often issue errors when closing an application.
7. Online Armor would crash. Sandboxie would disappear.
8. Online Armor's then wouldn't allow me to uninstall it. Arghh.
9. It took me the best part of a day to get OA off the system and get my sytem back. I thought at one point it was going to be restore time.
10. I installed Comodo v2.4. Sweet as a nut from then on. (Naturally, in a contest, Sandboxie was always going to be the one staying on my system. ;-))

Be warned!

speleo

[wraithdu]

I'm sorry to hear you're having problems with OA. I've been using OA FREE for a while with Sandboxie and NOD32 v3. I haven't had near the type of problems you describe. There were a few bugs with 2.1.0.31, but currently I'm using beta 60 (link from their forum) and have not had any problems at all.

What other security software are you running? Perhaps it's a problem with your certain combination.

[speleo]

Interesting... Are you running on XP or Win2k?

My security config is Avast Free and Winpatrol, plus Sandboxie and, from this point forward, Comodo v2.4.

My experience with Avast has been positive - at least in that it hasn't cause me any problems; can't say it actually works as an antivirus program, you understand! ;-)

I didn't turn off Avast but am still inclined to think that my problems were OA-related. Foolish me, I even tried reinstalling OA a second time but simply received a lot more grief, so it wasn't just a one-off.

As tzuk is forever finding, different combinations of s/w can give greatly differing results. Obviously, OA doesn't mesh well with my Win2k system.

speleo

[wraithdu]

Yeah I'm on XP. It seems most of the big problems for sandboxie have been on Win2k systems. I'm sure it's similar for other security products. Well at least you found a combo that works for you. That's the hardest part.

[SnDPhoenix]

It seems most of the big problems for sandboxie have been on Win2k systems.

Or it could just be a problem with the software itself?
It doesn't always have to be the OS's fault.

[Guest]

I also ran into problems with Online Armor and Sandboxie on my Windows 2000 SP4 system, and, like you, decided that if it came to the crunch, Sandboxie had to have precedence.

You might like to read the thread at

http://support.online-armor.com/forums/ ... =sandboxie

I also have Comodo 2.4, which, having looked at the Matousec results, I imagine will still be a top firewall for some time to come. That said, I am operating behind a hardware firewall in my Netgear router/gateway. I expect that, by the time the hackers have rendered Comodo 2.4 less secure, Online Armor will have been fixed. In the meantime, I'm more than happy to trust Comodo for the forseaable future - and Sandboxie, of course.

[Lode]

According to Matousec, OA is currently one of the two best: http://www.matousec.com/projects/window ... esults.php
I use AVG Anti-Malware (which is a combo of its AV and AS, but much cheaper than those separately), Free Online Armor, and Sandboxie, and have never had a single problem with my xp.
If I make a mess of it by installing something directly on my hard disk that doesn't want me to get rid of it and hides, I use an Acronis backup that I always make after the latest monthly MS updates.

This has been proven to be The 100% Clean Machine Method for me for well over a year now.
I even fought over the control of my cursor with a hacker twice. (This was before I had OA.) It was fun! Besides that, he was downloading all kinds of stuff on my machine, and the Anti-Malware went berserk, but I told it to allow it, just to see if Sandboxie would contain it. It did. Ending the Sandboxed processes got rid of the hacker and malware the first time. The second I had to manually press the "Off" button and restart, but that did it as well; I checked with my house scanner and the free online BitDefender and F-Secure scanners http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ and http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml -who also remove anything they find- but nothing, and this was halve a year ago... I still scan now and then, but nothing is ever found.
Sandboxie works great!

[VanguardLH]

The trouble is probably from Sandboxie hooking into the same system calls as do other HIPS products, like Online Armor. Read my post in the OA forum about seeing how OA and DefenseWall will try to hook into the same services:

http://support.online-armor.com/forums/ ... em+overlap

You could use the Resplendence Hook Analyzer to determine which services got hooked by OA (without Sandboxie installed), which got hooked by Sandboxie (without OA installed), and then compare to see how many were overlapped. It could be that multiple HIPS-like products, which probably includes Sandboxie, don't like to share or chain into the same service.

[Peter2150]

I've been running Sandboxie and OA together long before the current build of sandboxie, and long before and including build 31. I've never had any issues.

You need to be sure to trust all the sandboxie processes.

Pete