Windows 11 Insider preview brings new Sandbox features and fatter FAT32

Build 27686 of Windows 11 is out for Canary Channel Windows Insiders including the Sandbox Client preview, a fix for a potentially alarming registry issue and a warning for owners of Copilot+ PCs. The Windows Sandbox is a lightweight desktop environment in which applications can be run in isolation. It isn't a full-blown Hyper …

[karlkarl]

So like a Jail/WPAR/Zone but a couple of dacades too late?

Oh well, I'm sure people will find use for it for i.e extracting i.e drivers and other relocatable software from ratty installers. Perhaps also quite useful for developing / testing DRM cracks.

[Dostoevsky]

I was gonna say MS has reinvented the Flatpak, but it sounds like it's a bit different...

[Sandtitz]

"So like a Jail/WPAR/Zone but a couple of dacades too late?"

Why "too late"? The sandbox feature has been in Windows 10 for several years, this looks like just a minor update.

Anyway, happy to see the FAT32 format restriction relaxed. I Still need FAT32 formatted USB drives every now and then and with >32GB drives you need to partition them first.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought everything was exFat these days?

[Sandtitz]

Well...not everything.

For generic file sharing or e.g. memory cards exFat is dandy.

Since UEFI can boot only from FAT32, installing an OS from a USB drive on an UEFI system (with CSM compatibility off) requires the drive to be formatted as FAT(32).

You can boot UEFI system from CD/DVD/BD but the native UDF is not actually supported - the boot sector in these media contain a bootable FAT32 formatted image that the UEFI then executes.

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for that info.. I had thought the 2 were compatible, that exfat basically was a superset of FAT and worked with all FATs. Just as well my installer formatted my EFI partition. If I'd done it manually, I would have exFAT'ed it!

[TReko]

or Sandboxie

which was around in the XP days in Windows.

[ecarlseen]

Still true after all these years.

“Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.” - Henry Spencer

[rgjnk]

Regedit bug?

How the **** did they manage to get a bug into editing the registry? I can't believe any of that stuff has needed touching in years!

Has someone been needlessly fiddling to make things 'better'?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Better"?

You've just described 99% of the MS code monkeys, who also never use the products they work on in real-life. Which is why every "improvement" is some dumb ass cosmetic crap to a menu or ribbon to make something once easy now require 3 more clicks than it used to.

[David 132]

Re: Regedit bug?

Sure, Regedit is a solid & useful tool, but have you never thought how much better it’d be with a ribbon UI, integrated CoPilot, adverts for OneDrive built in, and mandatory Microsoft Account integration?

No?

[ITMA]

Re: Regedit bug?

"Has someone been needlessly fiddling to make things 'better'?"

I say unto you.... Windows 11 !!!

[Grunchy]

I (occasionally) run Windows in a real sandbox: within a qcow2 environment inside Virt-Manager running in Linux.

I gave it exclusive control of a second video card, too, so it has full hardware video acceleration.

The best part about using a real sandbox is that I can spin up duplicates in seconds and try out stuff on Windows, and if it goes wrong, can revert to snapshots or delete the copies. I’ve got all the options, all the control, and Microsoft has been completely neutered.

As a matter of fact I have zero intention of trying the new Mac OS or Windows ever again.

As far as I am concerned… they are irrelevant.

[ExampleOne]

So they finally managed to remove the 16bit limits from the FAT creation code?!

This means that many older devices using external can benefit from modern cards even without vfat support, so long as they have a proper 32 bit FAT implementation. I have a camera that meets that criteria.

[ChrisElvidge]

fat32format

I've used fat32format.exe since 2012 - https://www.fat32format.com

[Patrick R]

Re: fat32format

Ranish Partition Manager was doing that in the late 90s and I remember using it to format a 64GB stick a year ago.

[fg_swe]

Useful Sandboxing

What is still missing is a *useful* sandboxing concept for MS Office and similar software.

For example, an Office Script's effects should by default be limited to the file itself. Especially when it comes in from a different organisation by Email or messenger. Office should never be able to touch unrelated files such as C source or CATIA drawings. Users should be able to Label files according to security aspects. Database connections should be off limits for Office scripts, except when explicitly turned on. Office script code should be cryptographically signed by the author, such that only "in house, approved" scripts have serious powers to do damage.

"CompanyConfidential" labelled files should not be accessible to scripts of external or unknown authorship.

But I guess we will need to see several more rounds of encryption attacks before MSFT gets this done. Too many customers will buy their wares no matter how craptastic they are. As long as they look polished.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Useful Sandboxing

Totally agree ... *BUT* you are forgetting that security is not even an *addon* as far as MS are concerned.

Security for MS is something you 'paint' on afterwards ... over time the 'paint' flakes off as more security holes are found.

Running Any/All MS products in a *real* sandbox does sound like a very good idea.

:)