Outside of a VM is there a good way to keep an app sandboxed in Windows?

[Aston01]

I run a number of Autodesk products and it just seems like with each update and new version they continue to bloat up my system with more and more remnants of previous versions that never fully uninstall. When you use quite a few apps with the same tendency it just becomes kind of a mess over time.

 

Is there was a way to keep them sandboxed (or similar) so that when a new version came out I could wipe out the old version fully and install the new version each time?

 

I could run them in a VM but given the resource intensive nature of that type of app that doesn't seem like an efficient solution to the problem either.

 

Any suggestions or am I just going to be stuck with the having to periodically do a clean install of the OS?

[Arika]

3 minutes ago, Aston01 said:

Is there was a way to keep them sandboxed (or similar) so that when a new version came out I could wipe out the old version fully and install the new version each time?

???

 

yes?

go into the control panel, uninstall the program and then reinstall the new version.

Unless i'm not understanding what you are trying to do.

[Aston01]

8 minutes ago, Arika S said:

???

 

yes?

go into the control panel, uninstall the program and then reinstall the new version.

Unless i'm not understanding what you are trying to do.

Yea you understand exactly what I want to do (how it is supposed to work). But apparently Autodesk doesn't want it to be that easy.

I just upgraded to 2023 of one program today and uninstalled the 2022 version. Only 4 of the 25 entries belong to that new version...the rest never uninstalled with the previous versions.

 

It's like that with the other Autodesk programs as well...just an ongoing mess.

[Poinkachu]

10 minutes ago, Aston01 said:

Yea you understand exactly what I want to do (how it is supposed to work). But apparently Autodesk doesn't want it to be that easy.

I just upgraded to 2023 of one program today and uninstalled the 2022 version. Only 4 of the 25 entries belong to that new version...the rest never uninstalled with the previous versions.

 

It's like that with the other Autodesk programs as well...just an ongoing mess.

 

Maybe try use something like Revo Uninstaller to wipe out the registry & temp files entry(es) ?

[Aston01]

25 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

Maybe try use something like Revo Uninstaller to wipe out the registry & temp files entry(es) ?

That is an option.

I was just curious if there was a way to contain the install to begin with so that I could more cleanly wipe it out when I upgraded.

[LWM723]

Sandboxie or Too;wiz Timefreeze.

[buckyball]

Unless the app needs 3D acceleration, there's not much of a performance hit from running in a VM on modern hardware (assuming you're not starved for RAM, etc.). I run all of my personal stuff on Linux, but have a Windows 8 VM (using Virtualbox) I use for connecting to the VPN at work.

 

After I got the VM configured the way I wanted it, I took a snapshot. After each use, I restore the system to the most recent snapshot. When there are updates, I apply them and then take another snapshot. There's all kinds of fancy things you can do with VM snapshots.

 

Worth a look.