Add capability to feed chosen date to all apps in sandbox

[generalzod]

Sandboxie is great for being lighter weight than Virtualbox and VMWare, and those simply won't work when DX10 or DX11 are required. However, unlike virtual machine software, there doesn't appear to be any way with Sandboxie to set the date to one of the pc owner's choice for all apps. There's an program called RunAsDate, but it only works on one app, and sometimes that's not sufficient. Conversely, setting the date of the PC itself messes up logs and any other software that's running.

I want to have full control of the apps in the sandbox, and that means being able to set the date as I please.

Thanks.

[btm]

I look at sandboxie as security software, it helps keep my system safe/clean. I fail to see how a function such as this would aid in that. In fact, I can't think of a single instance where I would want to change the date for sandboxed programs, I vote no... Feel free to correct me with an example or two though.

[Buster]

This feature request has been demanded in the past and Roned said "no". He gave technical detail to explain the decission. If you make a search you probably will find the thread.

[generalzod]

I look at sandboxie as security software, it helps keep my system safe/clean. I fail to see how a function such as this would aid in that. In fact, I can't think of a single instance where I would want to change the date for sandboxed programs, I vote no... Feel free to correct me with an example or two though.

I view it as more than just security software. it's also a lightweight virtual machine (or sorts), where you can run DX10 and DX11 software that won't run on vmware or virtualbox.

What about the case of legally owned and purchased software that's advertised as having an "offline mode," but which tries to connect to the internet even in "offline mode," and records the last date of contact. After 5 days of no connection, it refuses to run. Suppose I want to use my legally purchased software without being tethered to servers that may be down and without sending who-knows-what info back to those servers?

By being able to set the date back in sandboxie (with this software run in sandboxie), I can block this idiocy. I feel that if you own the machine, have registered your legally owned software on the server once, that you shouldn't be forced to keep "checking in".

If this feature were provided natively, it would be a lot easier than trying to write a Driver wrapper around Sandboxie's kernel driver that intercepts application date calls.

This feature request has been demanded in the past and Roned said "no". He gave technical detail to explain the decission. If you make a search you probably will find the thread.

I did search, but the thread I found pointed at a deleted thread as justification.

[btm]

I've never encountered software that has such a silly restriction and if I did, I'd prolly just avoid it. It seems that you have seen this however and so I feel for you there and it certainly adds weight to your request. The problem as I see it though is that such an ability would be a blade with two sides. Adding such a function may seem to solve your specific issue but in reality if the creators are that paranoid in the first place they'd likely just end up adding sandbox detection and refusing to run inside, making things even worse for you by forcing you to run it outside of sandboxie...Might I ask what it is you've seen this issue with?

[generalzod]

I'd rather not give the specifics, but it's game software. (Please no 20 questions. ) I wasn't aware of the restriction in offline mode when I made the purchase, but I doubt they'd give me a refund.

Ideally, detecting Sandboxie from inside the sandbox would be impossible, but from the fact that you said that, I assume that's not the case.

[btm]

Nope it's rather easy and sandboxie makes no effort (nor intendeds to do so) to make it difficult to detect. From what I've read (including comments from devs) it's rather easy. eg there are many ways to verify if such an environment is in play, and it's one of the reasons people are urged not to make decisions based solely on the sandboxed experience while using any app as malware is more likely to make use of such checks.... If it helps, I'm not a gamer per say but if you want to PM me with the info I'd certainly appreciate it at the least...these days I tend to only try games my bro suggests but rarely anything else. I certainly don't want to purchase and support a game with such strict/weird requirements...I'm right there with you on that point!

[Craig@Invincea]

Sandboxie is great for being lighter weight than Virtualbox and VMWare, and those simply won't work when DX10 or DX11 are required. However, unlike virtual machine software, there doesn't appear to be any way with Sandboxie to set the date to one of the pc owner's choice for all apps. There's an program called RunAsDate, but it only works on one app, and sometimes that's not sufficient. Conversely, setting the date of the PC itself messes up logs and any other software that's running.

I want to have full control of the apps in the sandbox, and that means being able to set the date as I please.

Thanks.

Yes, I don't see this happening. Comparing SBIE to VMWare / VBox etc isn't a good analogy. VMs is just that, to allow you to run a complete OS Environment and have all (well most) as you would on a bare metal machine. SBIE is designed to wall your machine off. To protect you from the outside.....and yourself

Buster is correct, there was discussion of this long ago and well good technical details on why that wasn't considered.

[Inbox]

Buster is correct, there was discussion of this long ago and well good technical details on why that wasn't considered.

Too bad it was lost to the sands of time.

[Craig@Invincea]

Buster is correct, there was discussion of this long ago and well good technical details on why that wasn't considered.

Too bad it was lost to the sands of time.

It's a balancing act. Features vs adding much more complexity to the program that is designed to be light, fast and simple. At it's core, SBIE is a used as tool to protect you from outside threats. It's not intended to be a complete VM environment. It's there to compliment your host system and to be used as needed.

For a full VM OS environment, then that is when VMWare, etc comes into play to allow the full integration.