back to article Grab a bucket and spade: Sandbox open for Insiders again with fresh Windows 10 build

Having quietly admitted that an Internet Explorer update had taken an almighty dump in the Windows Sandbox, Microsoft emitted a fresh build of Windows 10 to fix the problem last night. Build 18309 took a bow overnight for fast ring testers and we can confirm that the Windows Sandbox is up and running once again. This is handy …

  1. AndrueC Silver badge
    Alert

    While the original intent was doubtless noble, hearing the dulcet tones of Microsoft's unloved assistant narrating the setup process can get grating.

    Pretty much before its completed the first sentence :-/

    1. DJV Silver badge

      Sentence

      Yeah, the bloody thing deserves a damn long sentence!

  2. doublelayer Silver badge

    Maybe fix the account craziness

    I recently had to help a person who set up a win10 laptop to sign in with a microsoft account, but then entered the wrong email address. The system let that work, for some reason, but kept asking for an email verification which couldn't happen because that address was not one the user had. Meanwhile, the system for switching the email address would not accept the real one because, according to whatever backend was put on it, that address was not available. I presume by this they meant that someone had already set up a microsoft account with it. The fact that that someone and this someone were the same person did not seem to matter. In the end, we ended up having to create the email account with the typo in it just to get the computer to shut up. So maybe someone could look into making that sign in method functional rather than trying to build what seems like the fifth sign in system for win10.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Childcatcher

    This will be massive for Pr0n fiends!

    Brilliant, just browse the dark-web from within the Sandbox container, 100% confident there's no record of what you've been looking for when the container is torn down.

    (Unless it's been backdoored by NSA/PLA/CIA/MI5 etc)

  4. Captain Scarlet
    Pint

    silencing of Cortana

    Hell yeah have a beer Microsoft for finally silencing the Clippy of recent years

  5. bombastic bob Silver badge
    Devil

    phone-based logins

    'both good and bad' - imagine your 4 character PIN number for your smartphone being the only kind of security a company's IT manager can rely on...

    After all, how many people use 1234, 0000, the last 4 digits of your taxpayer ID number, or your phone number, or your birthday, or something equally easy to guess? "That's the combination I use on my luggage" "And change the combination on my luggage" (Hail Skroob!)

    However, the potential is good as long as there can be 3rd party applications with security token storage that can manage it. I do not want to rely on Micro-shaft slurpware phone applications to do this kind of thing, with hidden "features" that phone home to Redmond. I've been concerned about the whole 'Micro-shaft Logon' thing from its inception, because it automatically has a unique identifier for YOU out on "the cloud", and Micro-shaft already admits in their EULA that they can share that information, and I don't know of any way to STOP them.

    But if a 3rd party application, say one WRITTEN BY THE COMPANY, can be use to provide a secure login on any Windows computer in the company, it would be VERY useful for IT managers, wouldn't it?

    (I'd consider open-sourcing a framework for one, just for grins, with a 'donate' link, see what happens)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: phone-based logins

      It's always dangerous to let a foreign entity own the mechanisms of "your" security.

      But for some, the blue rabbit hole has been progressed too far to consider turning back.

  6. Nodrog

    For users setting up a Home install Cortana can be silenced at any time during the process by clicking on the microphone symbol at the bottom.

    1. Wade Burchette

      Still doesn't solve the problem of removing Cortana completely from Windows.

      1. gypsythief

        FTFY

        Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

        [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search]

        "AllowCortana"=dword:00000000

        1. gypsythief

          Re: FTFY

          Fine! So that doesn't utterly remove Cortana (I still have a Cortana process running), but it does turn it into a standard search thingumydoodad instead of an all-ur-data-belongz-2-uz monstrosity.

          I think.

          Or hope.

  7. Steve Jackson

    Glad I gave in and upgraded to Pro. But then I haven't had to clean install since then either.

  8. shovelDriver

    Try this:

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search]

    "AllowCortana"=dword:00000000

    "AllowSearchToUseLocation"=dword:00000000

    "ConnectedSearchUseWeb"=dword:00000000

    "DisableWebSearch"=dword:00000001

    This let's you use a local search and restircts web search to your browser of choice.

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