Windows 7's PC Safeguard sandboxes user accounts

by Lee Mathews Nov 4th 2008

One of the first pieces I wrote when I joined Download Squad covered Microsoft SteadyState, a free application that caches changes to your operating system and can remove all traces of them on rebooting. Now it looks as though that functionality will be part of the Windows 7 core - with one major improvement.

Whereas SteadyState will lock down your entire system, PC Safeguard can be configured on a per-user basis. Making changes under SteadyState can be a bit cumbersome and usually requires at least one reboot. With PC Safeguard, you've got two options. First, you log off the protected user and log in with your administrative account.

Second, you can simply run a command as an administrative user and the changes will persist. For example: right click the Firefox installer, run it as the administrator, enter the password, and it's there to stay.

Safeguard can also lock any hard drive you specify to prevent write access with just a couple of mouse clicks. There's a bit of startup delay when logging in a protected user, but it's barely noticeable.

It's a much more user-friendly way to prevent potentially harmful changes to a home system, and just one more feature that will make Windows 7 look good, and make Vista Ultimate owners very, very angry. Have a look at the gallery to see how it works!

Gallery: Windows 7 PC Safeguard

[ via iStartedSomething ]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

ahmed mimi said 6:15AM on 11-05-2008

thank you i love you the end of live and love 4 ever

Fujiko said 9:18AM on 11-05-2008

I still use the old version of this program(microsoft shared computer toolkit) on about 50+ computers for school, the disk protection they have for the old one works much faster. The new method for disk creation on steadystate seems to take forever to create.

chrisaroz said 1:52PM on 11-05-2008

I am really loving Windows 7 so far (now that I have the new taskbar unlocked).

Matt said 3:07PM on 11-05-2008

It's like an OS-level "porn mode", awesome.

Rahabib said 3:27PM on 11-05-2008

this would be great if you let kid user accounts on your computer. cant wait.

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