From time to time a program comes along that gets me excited. First came FirstDefense now know as InstantRecovery (not actually a security program). After about 12 years this is still my number 1 favorite program, security and non-security. Then came Sandboxie. This still remains my favorite security program and I believe some of you are, or were, using it. Then came AX64 Time Machine and 1 or 2 folks picked up on that one. I am withdrawing my recommendation for that program, for now anyway, because that company is having a hard time getting their act "together". If they ever do get it together then we will have a truly awesome program.

Enter the next program that has me excited. Actually it has been around for years but I believe (and hope) that they are finally getting financially together, hard to do in a country that does not believe in freedom, China, but they hung in there and things are looking better. This program is Shadow Defender, and it is security about as good as you can get.

This program "freezes" your entire computer, ALL DRIVES if you wish including external, in a certain state. No matter what you do, whenever you reboot you are returned to "where you were". This is similar to Sandboxie which can be used for browsing, but Shadow Defender does it for YOUR ENTIRE COMPUTER. Yes, there are similar programs out there like Returnil and Deep Freeze. I have used and owned licenses for both of them ... yuck. I won't go into the gory details why I do not like them but compared to those two programs Shadow Defender is drop dead simple to use and IT'S LICENSE LASTS FOREVER not having to be renewed every year... double yuck, and it works on all of your drives no matter where they are.

A very important point to realize: Whenever you enter "Shadow Mode" everything you do afterwards will be deleted. So any Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, browser bookmarks, whatever, that you may have made or added to will be lost. There are two ways to save those changes so they are not lost. I use one of them, saving my Word docs and Excel spreadsheets, but that is only because I create my own and do not download any from the Internet (remember, if I save an infection then my system is infected although my other security programs would almost certainly nail it).

I use both Sandboxie and Shadow Defender together. After my anti-Virus has updated its signatures which only takes a minute, and I have created my daily c:drive backup, I then enter Shadow Mode and stay there the entire day (make sure you are NOT in Shadow Mode when you do your monthly Microsoft Windows Updates). I then use Sandboxie whenever I surf or check my email. Some folks at Wilders, the security forum, feel only one of them is needed. As for me, I like extra safety nets and as long as they work perfectly together ...

http://www.shadowdefender.com/

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

Interesting read, thanks Acadia I'll have to look into it more when I have a bit more time so thanks for the link. Lately I'm spending quite a bit of time in the Preview of 10 but I've not been well so computer stuff hasn't been top of my to do list.
Let us know how you get on with it running with your other programs.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

Actually, Joan, I have been using it for several years but was hesitant to recommend it because of the "lack of freedom" connection. But it seems to be having a reemergence. You all may want to know that SD is basically, as far as we know, a 1 man program ... but so were FirstDefense/InstantRecovery and Sandboxie in the beginning. Who says a genius has to work for a company, until he and his family gets hungry.

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

I'll endorse Shadow Defender, too.
I've been using it more than 4 years but only on my C drive and not the other internal drive.
Never had any problems that I can remember.
I also have Sandboxie, using it much longer than 4 years, and FDISR for a long time. Then I bumped up to Instant Recovery, although I didn't need to.
Anything I need to save goes directly into the 2nd hard drive or through Sandboxie recovery.

Acadia, somethimes I trease you about being paranoid but this is not one of those times.

I am curious as to how the system resource usage pans out. Do you ever see any lags in performance? Considering that this app, at least in a way, seems to turn your computer into a virtual machine I would suspect that the resource usage would be fairly high. With either my desktop or laptop this is probably not an issue as both are fairly strong systems but higher resource usage usually means more heat. Sigh, I guess the heat isn't even an issue. Don't know exactly why but, especially my desktop, runs extremely cool. Three different programs report my CPU temp at around 100F under normal usage and the BIOS does not argue... sorry, got off track. I would still be interested in how the system resource usage goes.

The $35.00 USD price tag seems quite reasonable, I may be interested. I also see that the $35.00 price is lifetime with free updates. That is one thing that disapointed me with MBAM. Used to be a lifetime license but now is a yearly subscription for the Pro version. I'm glad that I'm 'grandfathered in' on that one with 4 licenses!

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Hi Jay

I also use this setup. I don't see any lag at all. In fact one of the neat things, is now instead of using just the
hard drive for cache, you can set aside ram. I have it set to 1 gb, so until that is used you aren't even using
the drive. Jay there is no reason for high resource usage. If you save a file it has to write to the disk, so the only resource the the re direct to cause the disk write to be else where. You could work on my system and not ever realize it was shadowed.

The other neat thing is some of the comparable programs require you to determine ahead of time how much disk space you will use, and if you exceed it the program breaks down. There is no simliar limitation with shadow defender. A while back I tested this by shadowing a disk that had my virtual disk folder which was about 70gb. I saw no lag when using the machine, and when I exited all the changes were gone.

Pete

Thanks Pete. Are you running the Win 10 preview and, if so, are you using this on that install?

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No, I do not see any lag anywhere. Like Peter I use the Ram caching. I have allotted 2 gig of ram for this program but it has never used over 1 gig but I only do surfing, word docs, and excel spread sheets. Now if I did heavy duty stuff like working in music or video then who knows. Another nice thing about this program, which Peter touched upon, if you use more gig then you allotted, it seamlessly switches over to disk caching.

This program creates a "Shadow Mode" symbol that appears on top of your monitor to remind you that you are in Shadow Mode and all work you do will be lost unless you use one of the two methods to save your work. This symbol is unobtrusive plus you can drag and drop it anywhere on your monitor that you want. Sometimes if there is a program update such as Flash or Firefox or whatever, I will deliberately install the update while in Shadow Mode to see if the update plays nicely with my system. After several hours, if no problem, I reboot my system killing everything, then reinstall the update for real, then reenter Shadow Mode.

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

Hi Jay and folks

1. No I am not running the win 10 preview. I only test beta's that add something new for me. The OS, doesn't fit that category. I am about to replace my last XP machine as it failed, and I am going to get one with Win7 x64 on it. I won't go to win 10 until a) I replace hardware which won't be for a while, or b) when it is released to the partners program.

2. IMPORTANT. Acadia mentioned AX64 which when it came out was neat and I was enthusiastic. No more. It is off my machines not to returned, and I'd totally stay away. Not reliable.

Pete

LOL. Yeah, I still hope these AX64 Time Machine fellows can get it together. I even went so far as to remove my beloved FirstDefense and replaced it with AX64 for a while. Then the unbelievable happened: after several years of non-existence FirstDefense came back, reincarnated as Instant Recovery ... there really is a software God.

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

I concur about Shadow Defender. Not any real negative issues with it other than you may loose something because you forget what you are doing. The Moose, being a belt and suspenders kind of guy probably encountered that little issue. It's a nifty little program that is worth at least trying out and see how you like it.

To bad about AX64. It came out of the gate so nicely and so warmly received. I guess programmers have to eat but I do hope the new owners can pull it out of the fire. This thing has so much potential. I haven't totally given up on it but I did quit following the monster thread at Wilders.

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Best regards,
Manny Carvalho
MS-MVP since 2002

Actually I've been pretty good so far, I like the icon that reminds me "Shadow Mode". BUT knowing me, the day is going to come when I install a major program, probably just for testing and playing, just spent 10 minutes doing the install, the install requires a reboot ... Voila, everything is gone.

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

I can sum up the latest posts. Problems

Raxco IR, loses in terms of disk space, time, etc. But it is unparalleled in terms of reliability. And Raxco support is 2nd to none.

Pete

Yes, their tech support is the best that I have ever encountered. Reliability of FirstDefense/IR: forget it, if I speak the truth some passers-by will accuse me of exaggerating if not out-and-out lying.

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

Well get this for customer support. Over a year ago, I purchased a 3 pack of Perfect Disk. Couple a months ago I realized I really needed the home pack. So I called and asked if they had some kind of upgrade deal that would help. They said no, but.....and what they did was refund the purchase of the 3 pack so I could just go and buy the home pack. You just don't see that every day.

Pete

And get this: When Raxco reincarnated the original FirstDefense as InstantRecovery, I purchased a full license for IR. I did not know that several days before or later, Raxco was offering a discounted IR license for the old users of the original FD program. Peter just happened to mention to the head of Raxco tech support that I had already purchased a license, I believe for 3 pcs, I no longer remember; Peter knew that I had purchased this old/new program. I was notified by Raxco a day later that I was being refunded $50 for being an original user several years ago, and sure enough, the refund showed up. I never even knew about the discount!

I know, I know, off topic, but as I have said before somewhere, I learn as much from off-topic posts as from the originals ... and besides, I started this thread, so send it in all directions, I need education!!

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

You're not the only one who needs education and I learn lots from your posts even when they do go OT.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

I just had a question come to mind...which do you start first? Do you put SD into the sandbox or the sandbox
into the virtual environment?
I've always started SD first then Sandboxie. It never occurred to me to do it the other way.

Putting Shadowdefender in Sandboxie could have some unpleasant consequences. I just have them both installed on the computer. It's best to shadow with as little as running as possible. Then when I open the browser it's sandboxed.

Pete

Yup,
that's the way I do it, too. Shadow Mode first then sandboxed browser second.

Bingo. Sandboxie is an incredible program but asking it to contain an entire Operating System might be too much. It was designed for containing individual programs such as your browser and email client, etc. Shadow Defender contains and traps EVERYTHING on your entire c:drive.

Nothing quite like having two such strong layers of protection reenforcing each other, not that they really need reenforcing.

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson