Any genuine sandbox stuff that preserves image after a re-boot

jimbo45 · 01 Apr 2021

Hi there
For teaching students etc often using a VM is a good idea because each student can have "their own machine" - to do that efficiently the VM's need to be made non persistent otherwise you end up with zillions of different images !!!. The problem with that is the system loses all changes if a re-boot is required and some Windows installs / application installs require a re-boot.

The same is true of the Windows Sandbox system - surely someone out there must have written some logging software which would allow a user to "replay" the logs after a re-boot to restore the changes - this is quite common in database systems e.g SAP/MySQL etc if these crash and have to be re-started.

So anybody know of a decent Windows logger which could do that. Would be a brilliant aid for teaching students -- how about some of you younger and not so younger coders with a bit of spare time on your hands - could be a real money spinner. !!!

Cheers
jimbo

pparks1 · 01 Apr 2021

For that, i would use Hyper-V with a differencing disk and a parent disk. The parent disk is the read only copy of the base OS and such that you want to keep around, the differencing disk is what is used by the student. Once you are done with the class, materials, etc....you delete the differencing disk and start with a new clean differencing disk.

Samuria · 01 Apr 2021

There are software that will clear back to an image no matter what you do even delete windows but does allow updates that's what you need

Bree · 01 Apr 2021

I'm with pparks1 in using Hyper-V, though I think perhaps rather than differencing disks I'd set a checkpoint for the clean machine, then when all the playing around/insatalling/rebooting was done, just apply the checkpoint to go back to the clean machine.