acatalept/blog

I was having trouble getting Chrome to play nicely with Sandboxie - it loads and runs, but it was slow to show the "New Tab" page (with thumbnails of your most visited sites), the History page, and, well, most websites in general - so it appeared as though Chrome was trying to copy some needed files into the sandbox every time it loaded a page... Note that I have my sandbox set to automatically delete when the last sandboxed program ends to ensure I'm cleaning up after myself.

I couldn't find any specifics elsewhere, but after a little tweaking I solved the problem:

1. Go into the Sandbox Settings for the sandbox in question.
2. Make sure you check the checkbox at the bottom left of the window labeled "Apply changes when switching to another page".
3. Under the Resource Access section, go into File Access, then Direct Access.
4. Next to the dropdown labeled "The list above applies to", click the Add Pgm button, and find your Chrome executable, e.g. for Windows XP:

   C:\Documents and Settings\[Your User Name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

5. Make sure "chrome.exe" is selected next to "The list above applies to", then click the Add button, and find your Chrome User Data folder, e.g. for Windows XP:

   C:\Documents and Settings\[Your User Name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data

6. Now highlight the User Data entry you just added, click the Edit/Add button, and put an asterisk (*) at the end of the line, e.g. for Windows XP:e.g. for Windows XP:

   C:\Documents and Settings\[Your User Name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\*

   Tthis will include all files and folders within the User Data folder.

7. Next, back under the Sandbox Settings configuration tree, go to Resource Access -> File Access -> Read-Only Access, and follow the above steps to add the Chrome Application folder - when you are done, your entry should read (again, for Windows XP):

   C:\Documents and Settings\[Your User Name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\*

Now click OK to get back out of the Sandbox Settings, close all your sandboxed programs and delete the contents. Now every time you run Chrome in this sandbox, it should be as fast as (or at most only fractionally slower than) Chrome outside the sandbox.

I haven't tested this thoroughly, but so far it seems a good compromise between allowing Chrome access to all of its own files (though it may stumble when trying to update to a new version - more testing needed), while preventing any possible drive-by downloads or other executables from entering and running on my system.