Testing Software

In fact, member "Flinchlock" (I hope I spell it well) was the first one, who came up with this test. After running it the first time, I was so impressed that it was printed in my memory as well.

 

Oh well Eric (Eicar), seems it's copped your your name ftb.

Unless Flinlock complains?

 

Rollback does this .

Graham

 

I'm also surprised at the lack of attention to ShadowUser, particularly considering the success of ShadowProtect which is from the same company. ShadowUser and DeepFreeze were the original virtual programs produced by very established and reliable companies. All the other 'similar programs' if anything are either free or significantly cheaper (important factors) .

In the Storagecraft forum, ShadowUser has something like 60 entries in 2 years, quite reliable I think.

@ ErikAlbert

I won't do your deadly test for two reasons: I'm not that good at recovering from disasters, and if I have to, I'll deal with real disaster situations. Luckily there are already quite a number of volunteers who generously share their tests experiences.

 

FDISR is great for what you want to do. You probably will never get the Kill Disc trojan. If you do probably nothing will save you. As long as you don't introduce malware to test it FDISR will suffice to test questionable files as will returnil or sandboxie.

 

If had to trade the possibility to continue a shadow session on reboot (SU) and the possibility to enter shadow mode without a reboot (all the others), for me the first is of paramount importance in some situations compared to the second (Testing Software is the topic).

About the vulnerability, you are right, you tested it yourself, but you also agreed that other applications can stop such a threat (not to mention the fact that other similar applications suffer from this vulnerability).

"SU is a dated program" (2 years for a virtualization program is not that long), let's say it hasn't been updated yet. I'm also interested to see how many of the new offsprings will still be there in 2 years time.

 

As already been tested against the destructive power of Kill Disk trojan, POWER SHADOW comes out with a very nice passing grade as well as it virtualizes an entire drive and needs "NO REBOOT" to initialize it's shadow-mode, just one to dump the session.

That's a HUGE difference in realiability with safety.

 

I thought the thread is about testing software, and with POWER SHADOW you are limited.

 

Actually, the OP has yet to specify which type of 'risky' software that he wants to try. The OP has an imaging program which would allow them to try anything, but it wouldn't be convenient/speedy. Without further details, it would be hard to recommend favorites.

Returnil and PS 2.8.2 both protect the MBR, but don't allow for installing programs that need a reboot. My question is, what type of risky program would need a reboot and why would you want to try it unless you were investigating malware.

Free options are Returnil if the 'risky' program doesn't need a reboot and SteadyState if it needs a reboot. An imaging program would also work.

My dream setup: Imaging + ISR + Returnil and Sandboxie

I have a question. When a program needs a reboot, why is that? Is it installing drivers?

 

There isn't only malware to test, and lots of programs require a reboot (Windows updates most of the time). If I test a program it is uniquely to check if the system hangs for any reasons, and therefore there might be a conflict somewhere, or you just don't like the feeling about it, issues with memory resources etc.

I certainly wouldn't test malware with any program except having a good image of the system and (as lately learned from Peter2150) the original Windows CD.

 

That's true Osaban. I usually wait awhile after any release, MS updates included, before installing anything. I guess waiting wouldn't guarantee that it would work with my system though. I still would like more details from the OP as to want he's wanting to do.

 

Thanks for all of your advice. I think im just going to opt for a virtualisation program as all i really need is an environment where i can test out new programs without anything being permanently stored on my hard drive. However, i do need to be able to reboot without exiting the virtual environment for some software so program like FD-ISR and Power Shadow will be of little use in these instances.

Apart from VMware and Bufferzone, does anyone have good virtualisation recommendations?

ATI 11 also has a try and decide feature. Does anyone know if that is any good?

 

With FDISR create a testsnapshot so you can try an app.If you would't keep,reboot to other snapshot and copy/update from a current archive the testsnapshot and tested app. is gone.

If install require a reboot,with FDISR its no problem.

 

Do these Instant System Recovery programs affect user documents etc? Or do they act similarly to system restore?

 

Depends,with FDISR its possible to exclude user data from copy/update by "Anchoring"[fdisr term] these data, so its available in all snapshots,yes in this way they act as a system restore.

 

Thats great. Thanks. However, does everything get reset at every reboot? Id find that very annoying. I really just want something that would act in a similar way to system restore in that you can undo all changes very quickly when you want to.

 

They can better explain then i,!,its the same product.

http://www.softwarepursuits.com/bootback/bootback.asp

 

Thanks Peter. However, in my case, wouldnt Power Shadow or even ATI's Try n Decide be more effective as incase of drive failure etc, ive got my full backup on an external drive.

 

I too echo the complete confidence any customer can take stock in with FD-ISR. I'm only today concluding damage control by creating a new partition to store .arx archives in, and in large part thanks to Pete's knowledge + experience, i now understand the practice of occasionally deleting long sitting archives and recreating them afresh, although i'm still unclear as to exactly what timeline or life expectancy these archives have before the need to replace them. At any rate, FD-ISR archives serve for me anyway at least a generic way to backup my system almost in the same manner as an imaging program IMAGE.

I do a great deal of local testing so it becomes an important matter to have on hand some fashion of quick recovery against potential corruption, and FD-ISR's archives satisfies that requirement perfectly.