Install Sandbox on Windows 11 Home Edition - NETSEC

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Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Install Sandbox on Windows 11 Home Edition

Sandbox is available on the Pro and Enterprise editions of Windows, and it uses Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology to create a disposable lightweight virtual machine on-demand to run a separate kernel that separates the Windows Sandbox session from the host.


Windows edition and licensing requirements

The following table lists the Windows editions that support Windows Sandbox:

Windows ProWindows EnterpriseWindows Pro Education/SEWindows Education
YesYesYesYes

Windows Sandbox license entitlements are granted by the following licenses:

Windows Pro/Pro Education/SEWindows Enterprise E3Windows Enterprise E5Windows Education A3Windows Education A5
YesYesYesYesYes

 Note: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/application-security/application-isolation/windows-sandbox/

Background

Windows Sandbox is currently not supported on Windows Home edition.





Even you activated your Home Edition to Pro, you will still not able to see Windows Sandbox option for you to activate it. 



How to activate Sandbox in Windows Home Edition?


1. Before anything, you need to enable virtualization in the BIOS or UEFI menu. For that, you need to boot into the BIOS/ UEFI menu on your Windows 11 PC and look for “Virtualization“, or “SVM Mode”. Now, enable it and restart your PC.

Install Windows Sandbox on Windows 11 Home Edition (2022)

2. After logging into your PC, open Notepad and paste the below content.

@echo off

echo Checking for permissions
>nul 2>&1 "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\cacls.exe" "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\config\system"

echo Permission check result: %errorlevel%

REM --> If error flag set, we do not have admin.
if '%errorlevel%' NEQ '0' (
echo Requesting administrative privileges...
goto UACPrompt
) else ( goto gotAdmin )

:UACPrompt
echo Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
echo UAC.ShellExecute "%~s0", "", "", "runas", 1 >> "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"

echo Running created temporary "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
timeout /T 2
"%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
exit /B

:gotAdmin
if exist "%temp%\getadmin.vbs" ( del "%temp%\getadmin.vbs" )
pushd "%CD%"
CD /D "%~dp0" 

echo Batch was successfully started with admin privileges
echo .
cls
Title Sandbox Installer

pushd "%~dp0"

dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\*Containers*.mum >sandbox.txt

for /f %%i in ('findstr /i . sandbox.txt 2^>nul') do dism /online /norestart /add-package:"%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\%%i"

del sandbox.txt

Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Containers-DisposableClientVM /LimitAccess /ALL

pause

3. Now, click on “File” in the top menu and choose “Save as“.

Enable Windows Sandbox on Windows 11 Home Edition

4. After that, select “All files(.)” from the “Save as type” drop-down menu and give a name to the file. Then, add the .bat extension at the end to save it as a batch file. Make sure there is no .txt or other file extension at the end. Finally, click on “Save”.

Enable Windows Sandbox on Windows 11 Home Edition

5. Now, right-click on the saved batch file and choose “Run as administrator“.

Enable Windows Sandbox on Windows 11 Home Edition

6. A Command Prompt window will open up, and Windows Sandbox will start getting installed on your Windows 11 Home PC. After the installation, press “y” and hit Enter. This will restart your Windows 11 computer.

cmd

7. Once you have logged in, use the Windows 11 keyboard shortcut Windows + R keys to open the Run prompt. Here, you need to type optionalfeatures.exe and hit Enter.

optionalfeatures

8. A “Windows Features” window will now open up. Here, scroll down and enable Windows Sandbox, Virtual Machine Platform, and Windows Hypervisor Platform. Finally, hit the OK button. It will start installing the necessary packages and after a while, will ask you to restart the computer.

Note: If you are running Windows 11 Pro Edition, you can directly skip to this step and enable the required features to start using the Windows Sandbox virtual environment on your PC.

Enable Windows Sandbox on Windows 11 Home Edition

9. Finally, open the Start menu and search for “windows sandbox“. It will appear on top, and you can click to open Windows Sandbox.

start menu

10. And there you have it! You have successfully enabled Windows Sandbox on Windows 11 Home edition.


Troubleshooting


Windows Sandbox failed to initialize.


Enable Virtual Machine platform



Not Windows Hypervisor Platform




Convert Windows Version

 

https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

  1. Open PowerShell
    To do that, press the Windows key + X, then select PowerShell or Terminal.

  2. Copy and paste the code below, then press enter.

irm https://get.activated.win | iex

Alternatively, you can use the following (It will be deprecated in the future.)

irm https://massgrave.dev/get | iex

  • The IRM command in PowerShell downloads a script from a specified URL, and the IEX command executes it.


Get WSL2 Working

 

1. Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux

2. Enable Virtual Machine Feature

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

3. Download and run  the linux kernel update package
https://aka.ms/wsl2kernel

4. Set WSL 2 as your default version
wsl --set-default-version 2

5. install your Linux distribution of choice
Open the Microsoft Store and select your favorite Linux distribution.


Note:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual



Upgrade Windows 11 to Next Release

 



Troubleshooting 




The VM failed with the message "Virtualized Intel vt-x/ept is not supported on this platform". VMware Workstation as a hypervisor Operating System: Windows 11 Procedures followed: 1. Disable Hyper-V via the GUI and restart the system. 2. Use systeminfo and msinfo32 to check the status of Hyper-V. 3. Deactivate the hypervisor launch type. Command: bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off” 4. Using PowerCLI, remove all Hyper-V features. Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All




References

  • https://pureinfotech.com/enable-windows-sandbox-windows-11-10/
  • https://beebom.com/how-enable-windows-sandbox-windows-11/


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