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Returnil vs System Restore vs Sandboxie – Tech Support Guy Forums

Returnil places the entire system into RAM. Everything that happens during the session while Returnil is ‘on’ is just a computer “dream.” It exists only in the electrical patterns maintained in the memory chips. When the computer is powered down, everything vanishes, and the system is exactly the way it was when Returnil was turned on. No newly created folders. No downloaded songs. No bookmarks. No installed programs. Nothing really happened.

Now, Returnil does create its own virtual ‘drive,’ and things can be recovered from it if desired. And activity on CDs, thumb drives, and external hard drives is real; so files can be saved to those locations.
Returnil prevents any changes to the system partition. For most of us that means C:.

This makes Returnil perfect for those who want to give children opportunity to use the computer, but do not want to suffer the consequences of undisciplined practices. Using Returnil means that even if the child installed malware, it would amount to nothing and be gone after reboot.

Sandboxie creates a ‘virtual environment’ for selected applications. When a browser is run in Sandboxie, the result is very similar to what happens with Returnil–as far as the browser is concerned. The rest of the system is not affected. Like Returnil, at the end of the session it is possible to ‘recover’ certain items from the ‘sandbox.’ The application works well as far as browsers go. I have had less than satisfactory results trying to ‘sandbox’ an installation. Either the sandbox fails or the installation fails in the majority of cases. If I want to “try out’ an installation, I use Returnil. Sandboxie will protect from ‘almost’ all malware. I find it difficult to use since I collect so very many bookmarks.
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There’s also Acronis True Image Home 11. It allows you to run your entire system virtually, choose what changes to keep, and also has a complete system imaging capability. The best of all the worlds combined.

DeepFreeze is another that does exactly as you imagine. No permanent changes without a boot with it turned off. I use it on machines for toddlers that don’t even know that game scores can be saved and who enjoy restarting games each time

[From: Returnil vs System Restore vs Sandboxie - Tech Support Guy Forums]