Is it safe to delete baselayer and sandbox from Containers Folder

BillDoor · 18 Jan 2020

First post. Hello everyone and Happy New Year.
I made the mistake of following the tutorial to enable Sandbox. It failed miserably, with different errors at different times such as the common Error: 0x80072746.

So I disabled Sandbox but i still have this garbage partition sitting there with 8GB allocated. For those who had success disabling Sandbox to remove this partition (portablebaselayer), good for you. This does not work on my system, despite turning off all relevant features such as VMP and even containers.

After googling for hours I found a link to vhdx files and i did a search using WiseJet.
My question. Is it safe to delete vhdx files linked to Sandbox and baselayer? I don't use containers.
examples of the many related folders with vhdx files:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Containers\Sandboxes\a7a6c2d7-f74d-4386-91b0-b2c683d1cdd2\sandbox.vhdx

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Containers\BaseImages\0cd2da3a-d34b-4084-bfa5-ef3781acf177\baselayer.vhdx

I'm hoping deleting these files might finally allow me to get rid of this garbage partition.

Windows 10 Home
Version 1903
Build 18362.592

- - - Updated - - -

Update: I was able to uninstall the portablebaselayer through Device Manager, Disk Drives. Once uninstalled it no longer appeared under Computer Management, but on reboot it reappeared.
There has to be a way to get rid of this. It only appeared when I tried to install Sandbox (epic fail) and all suggested methods to have it disappear have failed.

Also, yes you can delete the virtual drive files in the containers folders but the ones related to baselayer will reappear on reboot.

spunk · 18 Jan 2020

Windows will automatically delete the baselayer partition for you when you disable the Sandbox feature.
Enable or Disable Windows Sandbox in Windows 10

BillDoor · 18 Jan 2020

spunk said:

[FONT="]Windows will automatically delete the baselayer partition for you when you disable the Sandbox feature.
[/FONT]Enable or Disable Windows Sandbox in Windows 10

Not on my system. If you read my original post, that's the point i made. Disabling the Sandbox on my Home version, my build, will not delete this partition. And yes I've read that post and dozens more, none of which worked. The only way I found to delete this partition was through the Device Manager, but it reappeared on reboot.

Just for complete clarity and to avoid getting the same link above over and over, I have unchecked all the boxes required including Sandbox, WHP, VMP, and even Containers.

And yes, I've tried disabling through admin/elevated powershell as well as from the cmd prompt. Neither method worked although both ran error free and removed the Sandbox, but not the partition.

Is it safe to delete baselayer and sandbox from Containers Folder-.jpg

Is it safe to delete baselayer and sandbox from Containers Folder-b.jpg

Deleting the Virtual disk, will remove the partition until the next reboot

Is it safe to delete baselayer and sandbox from Containers Folder-c.jpg

And yes, this is a dual boot system which still has a 32 bit Win 8 (Don't ask!)

Bree · 18 Jan 2020

BillDoor said:

...Also, yes you can delete the virtual drive files in the containers folders but the ones related to baselayer will reappear on reboot.

Welcome to Ten Forums BillDoor.

The Containers folder is used not just by Sandbox, but also if you turn on Application Guard.

A while back, when it was first introduced, a few of us were curious, turned on Application Guard and lived to regret it, with large files appearing in Containers. My first attempt at removing them was less than successful...

Bree said:

...after deleting as much as was allowed my Start menu stopped working in all user accounts, either by clicking on it or by pressing WinKey.

What is this large folder? - post #37

Fortunately had a Macrium system image I could restore. Subsequently I found some registry keys that also needed deleting. See if this post helps:

Bree said:

This time I managed to remove C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Containers without killing my system. Well, the Start menu works, my VMs still run and I'm posting this from that machine. This may be overkill, but these were the steps I took...

What is this large folder? - post #43

BillDoor · 18 Jan 2020

I have a backup as well, and all my data is on separate drives and partitions, but for me that would be the last resort. In passing i always laugh when "experts " suggest reinstalling windows as the optimal solution for Win woes. If i followed that advice i would reinstall weekly.😎