Sandboxie 3.74 (64-bit) (experimental protection option)
Windows 7 (64-bit) w/EMET
IE9 (64-bit)

My PC has been freezing for 15-20 seconds periodically in Sandboxie when using IE9. Normally I had to access Yahoo Mail to have this happen, but yesterday it happened just when browsing Yahoo.com without even being logged in. This freezing only happens soon after deleting all the contents of the default sandbox I use. If I don't delete the contents of the sandbox, it will freeze up once initailly, but not hang again until after the sandbox contents have been emptied. When the system freezes, I can do nothing. Not even Ctrl-Alt-Del will work until the the freeze up ends by itself. I don't think this kind of thing has happened before on this system using IE9 outside of Sandboxie.

I also saved the Process Monitor log that I had running the last time this occurred, but haven't been able to figure out what exactly is happening.

Thanks for any help.

A Resource Access Monitor from Sandboxie is more useful in cases like this than logs from Process Monitor.

Please see this page and then post your log.

http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?ResourceAccessMonitor

Thanks. Coincidentally, after I posted here, the problem stopped altogether. My system was freezing up soon after almost every single time I emptied the sandbox contents and checked mail on Yahoo (at least for several weeks). Now, nothing at all for several days, and I'm not really doing anything diferent. If the problem reappears, I'll be back with data from the Resource Access Monitor log.

Thanks for your help.

The problem reappeared today. This time connecting to a different site, CBS News.com. The same thing happened. I emptied the sandbox, connected to the site, and my system frooze up soon afterward. I sent you the log via PM. I wasn't sure whether I should post the entire log here or not.

I'm sorry to say that I don't see anything in the log that might point at the cause of this.

But it occurred to me that someone else reported a similar problem a while back, that their system would freeze for a while when they visited a secure login (https) page in a sandboxed browser. I can't find this topic now but I don't think that I fixed it.

But try this please. Use Sandboxie Control > Configure menu > Edit Configuration to open your Sandboxie.ini configuration file,
then and paste the following line just below the [DefaultBox] line:



(This is assuming standard installation of Sandboxie into C:\Program Files\Sandboxie, and also assuming you use DefaultBox.)

Then save the configuration file and exit the editor.

Now when you start anything under Sandboxie in DefaultBox it should cause SandboxieCrypto to start as well, and I would like to know if this gets rid of that freeze.

I changed the configuration file per your instructions. So far so good.

FWIW, one thing I can tell you. When the freeze up occurs, there is constant disk activity until the freeze up ends. According to the Process Monitor logs, during that 15 seconds or so, no sandboxed directories, files or registry entries are even attempted to be accessed (which, other than system drivers, are what the majority of events usually shown are when the system is not freezing up). But, what seems like every file listed under c:\windows\system32\catroot\{F750E06C3-....\*.cat are read one by one (among some other activity). Once that ends, the freeze up also stops.

And it is probably the SandboxieCrypto process which is reading that catroot folder. (Not on its own accord, it runs a copy of the Windows Cryptography service which accesses these files.) I'll make a note to try and research this further, for now I hope the workaround can make a difference.

Unfortunately, after having not used that system for a few days, the problem is back. Even after pasting the code that was posted. Oh, well.