Program testing surprise

[John Marsh]

On my laptop, I use a second, minimal and disposable XP installation on a separate logical drive, E. On this drive, I have been testing some audio apps, including AV Voice Changer Software Diamond Edition.

I now find that files & folders related to this app have appeared on drive C! Process Explorer shows no activity from the program on C and chaos has not broken out. But how could a program which was installed to E access C? And why would it need to?

It seems that the only secure place for a sandbox installation is on a separate machine.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Any program can access files anywhere. Why shouldn't it be able to?

A sandbox on a separate machine doesn't work either if you've got any writeable shares on the network.

[frostbite]

Is it a fairly old piece of software?

There was a time when some programs were written to only recognise C: and they couldn't cope with any additions.

Mind you, that is going back.....

[John Marsh]

GtW: Thanks for that; I didn't know a program would act outside of the partition it's installed on.

frostbite: It recognises E. I did some re-testing: the installer selects E by default. The files appear on C when the app is run.

[hellsbrink]

John

Thanks for the big letters, no idea why.

Yes, a programme can act outside the drive it's installed on. But normally it shouldn't even think about that unless you have told it to. The second part of your last post kinda points, to me, that you actually installed things on "C" and had a shortcut from "E" which would explain a lot, as Frostie pointed out (despite it not only being "older" software" which does that, it is still the "norm" to install to "C" no matter what drive you use with various programmes nowadays. What was the app?)

[John Marsh]

Thanks for the big letters, no idea why.

A smaller size gives tiny letters on many systems. They look big to me too!

I'm positive I installed on E. I rebooted into E and watched the installer closely. I gave the app no permissions to access C.

It's 'AV Voice Changer Software Diamond Edition'.

[Shunter]

The problem is not Windows. The problem is appalling standards of code and the use of static paths as opposed to the correct environment variables. Adobe were prime culprits for this until very recently.

You'd be surprised how many pieces of software still write to locations such as C:\Windows\Desktop as opposed to using logic along the lines of `IF OS=WIN9X use %WINDIR%\Desktop else if OS=WINNT use %USERPROFILE%\Desktop else ERROR`.

Snapshot-able virtual machines are highly recommended for such activities; Virtualbox (free), or VMware Workstation (not free).

[Keef]

But if you booted to the separate Windows partition on "E", that would be "C" as far as that installation is concerned, surely?

When you restart using your "normal" C boot, do the files appear on that "C", or are they now on "E"?

[John Marsh]

When booted into C, the 'migratory' files appear as on C. The program's main files are on E.

Paths as viewed from C:-

CAV_LOGS for the 'migratory' files.

EProgram Files\AV Vcs 7.0 DIAMOND for the program's main files.