A light setup with Sandboxie Free

I had a new thread moved to the "What is your current security setup?" thread and my question kinda got lost in there. I'm going to try another one to see if anyone has an opinion on a light setup for XP that includes sandboxie free and a real-time AV.

What I am currently using is in my sig on a 2.8ghz pentium 4 computer with 1 GB of ram. I've like panda cloud but version 2.0 has not been very light and I would like the option to not automatically upgrade to the latest version. I was thinking for a lighter setup this combination: LUA + SRP + SuRun + Sandboxie Free + Avast Free (file system shield only) + Ghostwall + MBAM Free + Hitman Pro Free. Will this setup be enough to protect my computer?

 

Your setup is more than enought to protect your system.

I would only consider to add something to backup your system, so you can quickly recover from possible problems. And don't forget to protect your personal data also.

 

That all looks perfectly fine. In my case I'd go with:

LUA + SRP + SuRun + Sandboxie Free + MBAM Free + Windows Firewall. That's just my preference as I've not been a fan of resident AV for a few years.

 

What he said plus HMP and a backup solution consisting of cloud backup like DropBox or Skydrive and drive imaging solution.

 

Soooo much of it depends on what you do.

For example, if you browse to check your email, get the news, go to some forums, you could use only Sandboxie.

If you also download files like movies or music, pdfs and such, then you can open all of this in the sandbox, and again need only Sandboxie.

In short if your worries are that your browser is going to "cause a problem", then always browsing in a sandbox will stop the problems. It is when you plan on bringing something that originated from the internet into your real system when you need to possibly have other means of security.

IMO the only real issue with using Sandboxie is that while it segregates what is happening within the sandbox from the real system, it is quite possible to get a "bug" in the sandbox. Frequently (or always) deleting the sandbox when you are done browsing can alleviate this. If you buy Sandboxie, then you have more options to employ (mainly forcing applications). You can also restrict what runs in a sandbox to further tighten things up.

I wish there were an easy 3 step solution for those with Sandboxie questions like yours. I think though that each person must know really what they do in order to really determine how much security they need.

Sul.

 

Hi Furion, you want a light set up? for now, use what you have in mind, after a while if you like Sandboxie and the feeling of using it on its own grows on you, get yourself a license so you can do what Sully describes here.

My XP consumes 200MB in idle, CPU usage is 0.Those are my numbers due to using SBIE on its own. I think you should get extra memory for that computer no matter what.


Bo

 

Thank you all for your recommendations. I have visited this site for over a year but this is the first time I have asked for advice. I switched to panda cloud from avira after the bug in avira made fullscreen applications lose focus. I discovered this site looking for a better AV and have been lurking ever since. I always appreciate and respect the opinion of the guys who post here.

I think I'm going to go with the setup I had in mind. I'll stick with a resident AV because I don't like the idea of having to manually scan each download or wait for the end of the day to do a scan with MBAM or Hitman. I would like to know right away so that I can move to a clean image.

Now it is time for me to research everything in further detail and make sure I can do what I want without to make extra hassle.

 

I tell you how to learn Sandboxie without to much hassle. Theres really only a few things that you should know when you start using the program, the rest can be learned as you go. A great secret about SBIE is that SBIE with default settings work great, most people that I know in real life, that are using the program, have never gone into settings and they don't get infected anymore. So, start using SBIE as it installs, changing only 3 things. 1) set the sandbox to delete on closing 2) set how you want to recover files and 3) set bookmarks to be saved. Other than that, know how to react when your AV detects something. When and if that happens, quarantine the file and delete it after a few days.

Bo

 

I agree with bo elam; get more RAM.
I upgraded three years ago from one gig to four and the improvement was immediately noticeable. I am able to achieve very good overall performance from a seven year old CPU (Pentium 4 Prescott 650 3.0 GHZ).
Additionally, the four GB of RAM allows for me to eliminate pagefile.


I run XP SP-2 (32 bit) using Windows firewall, IE8 with Keyscrambler free, SBIE free, WinPatrol Plus, MBAM on-demand, and Comodo time machine.
Imaging is accomplished via Paragon (any free version from 9.0 which has create/restore media), and Macrium free create/restore via Hiren's boot CD.
CCleaner and Glary utilities (free) help to keep the system clean.

I suggest you try this arrangement and good luck in your search !