Sandbox

The avast! Sandbox is a special security feature that allows you to browse the web, or manually run another application, in a completely safe environment, isolated from the rest of your system.

This is especially useful when visiting potentially infected websites, or if you suspect an application may be infected – you can run the program (or your web browser) inside the sandbox to determine whether or not it is safe, while remaining completely protected against any malicious actions that it may try to carry out.

To run an application or to browse the web using the sandbox, just click on “Run a virtualized process” then browse the files on your computer to find the required application e.g. Internet Explorer. The browser or other application will then open in a special window with a red border, indicating that it is being run inside the sandbox.

In the Expert Settings, you can further define applications that should always be run in virtualized mode, and trusted applications that should never be virtualized.

Context Menu

By checking the box “Integrate into the right-click context menu…” on the Parameters screen, you can add this option to the context menu. You can add this option for all users, or only for users with administrator rights.

You can then run an application in the sandbox by simply right-clicking it and selecting “Run virtualized”.

If an application should always be run in the sandbox every time it is started, select “Always run in sandbox” and the application will be added to the list of applications on the Expert Settings screen which should always be run virtualized. Every time the application is started, it will appear inside a red border which indicates that it is being run inside the sandbox.

Right-clicking on an application that is already in the sandbox, will open a new context menu which will enable the application to be run one time outside the sandbox or alternatively, it can be removed from the sandbox completely so that it will be run in the normal environment again every time it is started.

Basic settings