Returnil Premium is a program that can emulate the operating system in a sandbox – a virtual environment – so that changes have no effect on the system itself but only to the sandboxed copy of it. It does not require lots of computer knowledge to run, the only thing that’s out of the ordinary is the (optional) creation of a virtual partition that will be used to store data when the sandbox is active. Here are the steps on how to use the security software:

• Installation: You get some options here most notable to run the system on the hard drive or computer memory. There is also the optional setting to create a virtual partition on the computer system to store data. An alternative would be to use online storage space.
• Running Returnil: You can start Returnil after a restart. Once Returnil is started it will redirected access to the virtual system so that the actual computer system will not be harmed. You can then use whatever application you like. Keep in mind that any changes that have been made to the computer system will be undone after a restart as they have only been made in the virtual system and not the actual one. Here is an example:

  If you bookmark a page while Returnil is running it will show up in the bookmark manager. It will however be gone after a restart of the system.

• Stopping Returnil: The only way to stop Returnil is to reboot the computer system.
• Saving Data: Two ways to save data. The first is to use the virtual partition to store the data on as it will not be erased after a reboot on that partition. The second is by utilizing online storage space. You can sync bookmarks online, save files there, edit Word documents and basically do most things online.

How does Returnil work?

It is obvious that Returnil cannot mirror dozens of Gigabytes of data in the sandboxed environment. There is actually no need to clone the whole system. All that needs to be done is to keep track of the changes to the system and act as a proxy between the computer system and the virtual system.

What are the differences between the free and the premium version of Returnil?

The premium version of Returnil adds quite a few features that make it interesting. The user can choose to cache data in the computer memory or on the hard drive, save sessions to continue working with them at a later point, relocate system folders, to browse and move files between the real hard drive and the virtual drive, shell integration and free customer support.

Returnil Premium adds much needed features to the virtualization software that are missing in the free version. The main benefit of both versions is the simplicity of usage. You only need to press one button to turn the protection on once it has been configured the way you want.

Remember, you can request your Returnil Premium key by following the link on top. Would be still nice to tell us what you think of it.

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Returnil basically clones the system partition of the computer and boots the computer using the clone instead of the real system partition. The effect is of course that changes made to the clone can be reverted easily by rebooting the PC. Folders can be specified that retain the data that was saved into them, if you would not do that the saved files would be gone after a reboot.

I wrote a review about the free version of Returnil a few months ago. The premium edition of Returnil has some advantages over the free edition. It comes with a Session Saver and File Manager that the free version lacks. It’s also possible to choose the caching method and it does add several other features that are missing in the free version.

What Returnil offers is a way to use a virtual system that does not degrade system performance in any way. It might not be needed by experienced users but it’s definitely a good way of protecting the system if you are an inexperienced user or want maximum security.

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