First of all, a big thank you for such a nice program! Whenever i click the sandboxie icon, firefox opens up automatically. Could you please tell me how to disable this option? Maybe i'm just plain dumb...but i assume that there is some configuration option out there? Thank you very much.

What do you mean click the sandboxie icon? You mean the shortcut on your desktop? If so, then that action is normal seeing as clicking that shortcut on your desktop is supposed to launch the default browser sandboxed (which i guess in your case is Firefox)

Hi,
Thanks for your reply and you are actually right! I tried clicking the "Control" file which I think is the direct .exe file for sandboxie and this did not happen! I assume that the shortcut directly launches sandboxie with the default browser. Many thanks for your assistance!

Right, and if you right-click the Desktop icon and choose 'Properties', you will see in the 'Target' box:
"C:\Program Files\Sandboxie\Start.exe" default_browser

The Desktop icon runs the Sandboxie program Start.exe, and the <space>default_browser in that line tells the Start program to run your computer's default browser, sandboxed.

Okay...here's a new "problem", whenever i click a .dll file, i get the sandboxie start message "could not invoke program"(and the sandboxie icon is displayed in the system tray automatically) . Any idea why this happens? I assume that i have to tweak some kind of settings to bypass this? Thanks.

Single left-click, or double left-click, or single right-click?
Isn't the Sandboxie icon in the system tray already, or is that Option turned off on the Main Window's "Options" menu ("Run Sandboxie Control on System Startup")?

Actually, even if sandboxie "starts" up by default or i start it manually, it does not matter. Whenever i double click any .dll file i get the error message "could not invoke program". Please advise.

EDIT: Just checked again and this problem is there whenever i click "weird" system files with the extensions (.dat, .pak etc.). Any idea what's going on?

Danger man, what are you trying to accomplish by double-clicking DLL files?
I don't think it's possible to run DLL files at all, so why are you complaining that you can't run them sandboxed?

I think you just need a little information on how to use Sandboxie:
The icon on the Desktop - -> you already know it runs your computer's default browser. That's what it's designed to do.

You can right-click the Sandboxie icon in the system tray, and see some other choices:
*Run Sandboxed: You can use this menu to run programs 'sandboxed', such as your default email program, Internet Explorer, or you can choose "From Start Menu" and get a list of programs that are on your computer's Start menu that you want to run sandboxed.
You can also choose "any program" and Browse to the program. You can just type-in the name of some programs, and if that program is in your computer's "path", it will be run. For example, choose the "any program" item and type in the box:

notepad
then click on OK and Notepad should run in the sandbox called DefaultBox.

After running notepad, if you type-in something and then save the file, the file will be saved in the sandbox. In order to more easily get this file out of the sandbox, to your 'real' hard drive folder, you would first setup an option in the Sandboxie Main Window by double-clicking the Sandboxie tray icon, choose Configuration > Sandbox Settings > Set automatic Cleanup Options. Here you can define folders that you would normally save files to, and sandboxie will find files in those folders when you choose "Contents of Sandbox" > "Recover" files from the tray icon. Or you can choose to have them automatically recovered.

From Windows Explorer, you can right-click a program's .exe file and choose "Run Sandboxed" if you wish.

After you learn more about how to use the Sandboxie Start program, in the same way that it is used on your current "Sandboxie Quick Launch" Desktop icon, you can set up your own Desktop icons to run programs of your choice by double-clicking the icon instead of using the menu on the Sandboxie tray icon.

Double-clicking the .dll, .pak, .dat files has nothing to do with the operation of Sandboxie - that error message is just your computer telling you that it doesn't know what program to run.

Read the write-up at www.sandboxie.com if you haven't already. It's a good place to start learning about the program. Don't overlook the Help & FAQ files.

Sorry if i was not clear...you're right i have nothing to accomplish by opening .dll files! However, before installing sandboxie, whenever i clicked unknown or unrecognised file types, i got the following message: "Caution

you are attempting to open a file of type 'Application Extension' (.dll)

These files are used by the operating system and by various programs. blah blah blah'

Now i get the sandboxie error message...This question was raised by me out of curiosity

Thanks anyway and yes i will re-read the instruction manual a little more carefully.

Off topic: I would seriously like to test malware and other such stuff in sandboxie. I've also created system restore points. Do you have any kind of tests like that?

Sorry I misunderstood the meaning of your question. I did some investigating on my own computer:

I was wondering about your double-click experience, so I right-clicked a .dll file. The item in bold, at the top of the resulting menu, shows that on my computer the default action, for a double-click, would be to open a program called CDCheck. That program is used to compare 2 versions of a file, primarily to see if it was written correctly to CD.
That program would have no business running if I double-clicked a .dll file. I found what I believe is the responsible entry in my Registry, and find that Sandboxie's Start.exe program is listed, as well as CDCheck, in the same Registry key.

My Registry entry, highly edited and condensed:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\CDCheck
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\CDCheck\command
"C:\Program Files\CDCheck\CDCheck.exe /G "%l"

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\sandbox
"Run Sandboxed"
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\sandbox\command
"C:\Program Files\Sandboxie\Start.exe" "%1" %*

Since you probably don't have CDCheck, I guess that the Sandboxie entry is what is responsible for your experience. I don't know enough about that Registry key to know why the "Run Sandboxed" item was placed there, except that it makes "Run Sandboxed" show-up when right-clicking just about any file - not just executable program files. And, I would guess that it has become the default action on your computer for those files that have oddball extensions, and no default action defined for them.

Precisely!

Thank you! That explains a lot....

Again off topic..Do we have malware/spyware tests to test in sandboxie?

Hmm, well there was this one topic that was created about 3 months ago that was dedicated entirely to posting viruses/malware/spyware/etc.. Unfortunately it never caught on and is now buried somewhere under a pile of forum debris.

Okay....what other tests do you guys have? can users/testers(like me) participate in them? Please let me know.