Microsoft Windows Pro & Enterprise editions have a great new feature available – Windows Sandbox. An isolated desktop environment that you can use to run untrusted software that you can dispose of after testing. You always have a clean install to test software, and it’s wiped clean after running. There are quite a few use cases for this feature, and will come in very useful for IT professionals, software testing, security professionals, or just the average user on the higher editions of Windows wanting to play around without affecting their host OS.

How many times have you downloaded an executable file, but were afraid to run it? Have you ever been in a situation which required a clean installation of Windows, but didn’t want to set up a virtual machine?

At Microsoft we regularly encounter these situations, so we developed Windows Sandbox: an isolated, temporary, desktop environment where you can run untrusted software without the fear of lasting impact to your PC. Any software installed in Windows Sandbox stays only in the sandbox and cannot affect your host. Once Windows Sandbox is closed, all the software with all its files and state are permanently deleted.