Thanks for helping with this lawnman. Your debug log shows running IE through Sandboxie Start.exe, but you all said this is something that always work anyway.

So instead, run windbg directly on -

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"

And let's see the output from that.

Just installed latest version. 3.39.20.
Latest. just discovered with this version if firefox is running (under sandboxie) I can launch Internet explorer as a forced program; but as soon as I terminate firefox and try to launch I.E. 8 sandboxie momentarily displays dots then none and internet explorer does not start.

Sidenote: Was unable to select upgrade halted during install. Had to uninstall old version.

This log doesn't help after all. I was hoping for some hints, maybe a crash, but there is nothing.



Do you have auto-delete for your sandbox? And does the termination of Firefox cause the sandbox to go empty?

Do you think it is Firefox that is making a difference, or SandboxieRpcSs/DcomLaunch? Try instead of Firefox, to use Sandboxie "Run Any Program", so that you have running Start.exe and SandboxieRpcSs/DcomLaunch. Does this also make forcing IE work ok?

* * *

Is there anyone other than me, using Windows 7 and also not seeing this strange behavior?

Hello tzuk,

It really is strange as occasionally it has started to work! I stress occasionally because for the most part it does not work. I have taken a screen-shot of the behaviour and will upload it to rapidshare if you like it's about 47 MB. It shows the behaviour I mentioned plus at the end it starts working for some inexplicable reason but not for long. Rapidshare link: http://rapidshare.com/files/284524469/SRFile2009_9_24_21_19_6_380.avi.html

I also do not see this happening on my Win7 systems (2 of them).

As I asked before, is there a chance you have an instance of iexplore.exe running outside the sandbox before you try to launch it forced? I know this is unlikely, but I want to check. Also, how are you launching it forced? Standard shortcut? From a link in Outlook or something?

Dear wraithdu,

To answer your questions no I am not running an instance of Internet Explorer outside of Sandboxie. In fact that was the only instance of it running, I literally just booted up (the computer) and started the screen-capture. As for the other point, I enabled internet Explorer as forced from sandbox settings under applications...web browser section from within sandboxie. I also purposely uninstalled all third party programs that start at boot time. I do not have auto-delete enabled. As far as my thinking goes, whatever prevents I.E. from always starting as forced does not affect Firefox. Once firefox is stared, the two critical .exe's have started and because they are not terminated I.E. can start but this does not explain why it did work on the odd occasion without firefox running at the same time!!

I hope this helps.

lawnman thank you for the video. Your computer seems to respond extremely quickly to the IE button, good for you! It gave me an idea as to what might be the problem. Please download a replacement SandboxieRpcSs and drop it over the one in your Sandboxie installation folder.

http://www.sandboxie.com/SandboxieRpcSs.exe

(This replacement program file is for Sandboxie version 3.39.22.)

The new file appears to have done the trick. Internet Explorer seems to be working, at least on the few tries I've done.

What was the problem?

Thanks for the quick confirmation. I hope nick s will corroborate soon so we can put this issue to rest.

Assuming I have the right problem, this is what is called a race condition, which is a fancy way of saying that you might get unexpected results when more than one thing happens at the same time.

In Windows 7, SandboxieRpcSs actually has to run two services, as opposed to just one in XP and Vista. I made the mistake of letting the two services run their initialization sequence at the same time. I guess in your very fast system, they just happened to complete their initialization in the reverse order of how it is in my system. And that was causing the problem.

The fix was to make sure that service 1 initializes before starting service 2.

Now you might be asking, how come this affected only Internet Explorer? The answer is that, as far as I can tell from all my testing of Windows 7, IE is the only program that actually uses this new service.

Sorry for the delay. Forcing IE with build 3.39.22 + the replacement SandboxieRpcSs file works, but not consistently. When it does not, I see the following Sandboxie RpcSs message: "SBIE2399 Service fails with error 0. Last checkpoint was 1". I do make sure the sandbox is empty between attempts.

OK nick, I prepared an updated SandboxieRpcSs, please download again and try.

http://www.sandboxie.com/SandboxieRpcSs.exe

Although I was only able to do a few quick tests before going to work, forcing IE now works consistently .

I'm glad this problem is finally resolved. Thanks for the help.