Quite some time ago I ran into a program called SandboxIE, which seemed like a great solution to the problem of a cluttered FS9 folder resulting from trying out new add-ons every now and then:http://www.sandboxie.comI tried it on a 32-bit Windows XP machine and it seemed to do exactly what it said, but without an x64 version I couldn't try it out on my sim machine which runs Windows x64.I recently revisited SandboxIE's website and noticed that an x64 version had been released, and rushed to install it. Unfortunately Microsoft had released a hotfix to the x64 kernel last month that prevents programs from extending kernel functionality (which SandboxIE does). Because of this the x64 version did not work on my machine and my hopes of trying this out with FS9 were crushed once again.However, since this program might be extremely useful for flightsimmers who aren't running 64-bit Windows yet, I figured I'd ask someone here to test my theory out. You'll need to download the 32-bit version of the program and install it in your 32-bit Windows. The installer adds a system-level driver to your computer, so you should have administrative rights and a bit of knowledge about what makes a computer tick. The installation / uninstallation is very simple, but I wouldn't want someone who doesn't know their computer inside out to try this on their own as the *potential* for problems is there.Before going ahead, I'll explain SandboxIE a bit (although you can find all this on the program's website). In short, SandboxIE acts as a buffer between your harddrive and programs you run on your machine. The programs have read access to data on your computer as they normally would, but whenever they write something to your harddrive the data is actually written elsewhere and the sandboxed program merely THINKS its where it should be. If, for example, you save a text file within a sandboxed Notepad to the root of your C: drive, a non-sandboxed Notepad won't see it there. The sandboxed files are stored in a specific folder within your Documents and Settings folder which is usually on your C: drive. They're not encrypted or compressed in any way, they're just stored in a separate location, keeping the "real" files intact (SandboxIE was originally created to allow safe web browsing with Internet Explorer, by preventing malicious websites from gaining write access to important files within your harddrive).Once you've installed SandboxIE and restarted the computer, find an add-on you'd like to install (one that you don't already have in your FS9 folder). Right-click on its installer executable and choose "Run Sandboxed" (or somesuch, I can't remember what the command was). Go through the installation process as you normally would. Some programs might not work through SandboxIE, but in my limited experience these were rare. If this particular installer won't run, try another.Now, run FS9 as you normally would and confirm that you can NOT see the add-on you installed within SandboxIE. This is crucial, because the whole point of this excercise is to confirm that you can try out add-ons safely, without actually adding anything into your real FS9 installation directory. Once you've confirmed you can't see the add-on within FS9 (such as a new airplane in the aircraft list), exit.Right-click on your FS9 shortcut and choose "Run Sandboxed". FS9 *should* start as it always does, with the difference that the add-on you had installed within the sandbox is now visible. If the add-on is a plane, load it up and make sure it works. If it's a scenery, fly around it and confirm that you can see stuff that wasn't there in the earlier non-sandboxed FS9 session. See if performance is affected in any way. It shouldn't be, since FS9 mostly reads data - write performance *might* be affected if, for example, your Documents and Settings folder is on a different physical harddrive than your FS9 installation, that drive is a slow write performer and the data being written is huge (which shouldn't be the case with FS9 - it reads a lot of data, but doesn't write much).If everything works as it should, my theory works and SandboxIE can be used to safely test any number of add-ons without fear of cluttering your real FS9 folder. You can confirm this by opening SandboxIE (double click the yellow icon next to your clock) - look for an "Explore Contents of Sandbox" -command within the File menu and check that the folder structure of your FS9 installation has been re-created for those files that were added by the add-on or modified by the sandboxed copy of FS9 (such as scenery.dat or FS9.CFG). Then compare that to your real FS9 folder and see that the files are not there, or they aren't the modified versions.When you're done testing the add-on, you can clean up the sandbox through the "File" menu by choosing "Delete Contents of Sandbox". Note that this removes ALL sandboxed files. If you want to remove just some files, you can explore the sandbox and delete those files as you normally would. You don't need to access the "Add / Remove Programs" menu to uninstall add-ons, as they're not added there (that's the whole point, remember? :) ). Your "real" registry will also remain unaffected. You might find a copy of your registry file within the sandbox if an add-on installer alters it, but those changes (and everything else) only exists within the sandbox.As I mentioned before, not everything can be guaranteed to run sandboxed. One such example would be an add-on that installs a driver or a DLL into Windows which is run at startup. Since Windows itself does not run inside the sandbox, the sandboxed driver won't be loaded at startup. DLLs that are loaded at runtime should work just fine, though, as long as the program looking for them is also ran sandboxed.So... any takers? :) It'd be great if someone could try this out, even though I can't utilize it myself :/

Thank you for the heads up, certainly something to consider for some...But after the 2nd crash of my PC within a short time, I decided to only install the absolutely minimum and only one plane as first step.I do all my testing on another PC running VMWare...Andreas

Fair enough, as I said I'd test this myself if I could :) I can certainly understand not wishing to install anything you don't really need (I'm the same way myself).Anyone else?

Hi Janne; if you want to safely test a download prior to buying, or trying it - then do a search on this forum for "DeepFreeze". There are two of my earlier posts there, and they show you a totally safe solution which will forever fix the possibility of a bad .dll or over-writing files, etc., or even the often - inability to uninstall ALL the files - by the new software.

Thanks for the suggestion - I imagine Deep Freeze would work in this capacity as well, although it's clearly aimed at bigger issues than orphaned files being left behind by flightsim add-ons :)