Virtual registry

[nite_monkey]

Hello, I would like to ask if anyone know of a program, or has made a program to do this:
I would really like a program that would turn itself into your registry. Meaning whenever you install something this program would keep the install from saving anything to the registry. I would then like it to save the registry settings for that new program to a folder, and then you would just double click on a shortcut on your desktop this this program made for any icons the installed program was supposed to make. That way when ever you ran the program from the special icon(or from a list in the program I guess) all registry and file changes would be saved to a folder. Let me make some screen shots and see if I can make this more clear.

ok I made a lot of screenshots, so I built a simple page on my site, so to view them, go screenshots removed from my website

I would really like it if someone could come up with a program that would do this, I mentioned in a different thread that I used altris virtualization solution, well that halfway works, but not exactly how I want it to. It saves all the registry files and what not in some special place I don't know about. Plus it also uses the registry, I don't know about you, but I want a virtualization program that doesn't use the registry.
Please and thank you in advance.

[mwb1100]

I think that SandboxIE would come close to doing what you want (http://www.sandboxie.com).

For some technical details see:  http://www.sandboxie...php?SandboxHierarchy

[nite_monkey]

Well I used sandboxie and it gets the file saving part almost perfectly, but I just didn't know how it dealt with the registry files, but after reading the technical details, I guess I can live with the way it works, though I would still like something that would atleast put the programs in their own folder in a single folder, kind of like sandboxie, but unlike sandboxie, they would first go into a folder named what ever the program is, and then it would put the programs in the folders that sandboxie uses.
I could I guess use sandboxie until someone could hopefully come up with something somewhat like sandboxie, only maybe a tad bit more organized.

[Nighted]

Closest thing to what you want: Software Virtualization Solution

Homepage

Doesn't store reg keys in a fashion that you want. You'd have to create a loader for every program for that. It does restore the original registry to it's prior format after unmounting the programs you have loaded into it though. It would come in handy for extracting registry info for a particular program, but you would have to backup the original registry and then the modified one, THEN compare and extract the modified portions into separate registry files. You could leave these files separate or merge them all into one file.

[nite_monkey]

I posted in my first post that I was already using SVS, I was wanting something with more control. sandboxie gives me more control over the files, I don't have to remember where I installed the program, I just have to goto sandboxie's sandbox folder. Though both of the programs hide the registry files from you, so o well. I will just use both until I can find a better one.

[Darwin]

Just to note: a reply came in as I was typing the following. I *think* it will still be useful for the OP. Hope so!

sandboxie (now, as opposed to version 2.64 and earlier) faithfully replicates your folder structure so any programs you install should go into their default install locations within the sandbox. Thus, program xyz which installs into your Program Files directory by default should go into: c:\documents and settings\username here\application data\sandboxie\default box\drives\c:\program files\xyz. You can access the program via your sandboxie systray icon. You can define different sandboxes as well, which is useful because often you want to be able to delete a sandbox associated with, say, surfing the net, but don't want to delete all of your sandboxed program installations as well. This is very useful for test flying software that you want to try before making a committment. Anyway, I suspect that I'm missing the point... Don't worry, happens to me all the time...

[nite_monkey]

I am using sandboxie 2.64, and it does all of that.