Fix Error 0x80070013 The media is write protected in Windows Sandbox

Today was a good day to try out Windows Sandbox. I quickly found out that Windows Sandbox was not useful in this first release. But before I discovered that, I first had to deal with error 0x80070013. The media is write protected. 

The error 0x80070013. The media is write protected

Right after the installation, I got this message “Windows Sandbox failed to start“.

Apparently, something was write-protected. Event logs weren’t very helpful in this case. I couldn’t find errors in the SYSTEM or APPLICATION log.  Luckily, I suspected Bitlocker causing these troubles. Bitlocker was also the culprit in my Onedrive Personal Vault issue.

Fix 0x80070013

The solution for this Sandbox error is surprisingly simple. A registry entry value needs to be changed from 1 to 0. Temporary. Follow these steps:

1. Open Registry Editor as administrator
2. Navigate to key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FVE
3. In FVE, notice the FDVDenyWriteAccess. Double-click it and change the value from 1 to 0. Click OK.
4. Start Windows Sandbox from the start menu and let it boot
5. Back in the Registry Editor, change the value to 1
   

Your Sandbox should work permanently now. But please leave a comment below if you encounter other issues.

Conditions for error 0x80070013

There are a few conditions that must be met before the error occurs.

First, your device needs to be Azure AD joined.
Second, the harddisks in your device need to be Bitlocker protected.
And third, there must be a policy requiring all disks to be Bitlocker protected. And when this is not the case, the disk must be read-only.

Lacks in Windows Sandbox

I found a few key functionalities that are missing in this version of Windows Sandbox. Some of them are:

• Can’t reboot or log out without losing all data
• Can’t switch user
• Can’t change performance 
• Can’t make snapshots to revert to milestones
• Logging in with an onmicrosoft.com account seems to be prevented

For these reasons, I will not use it very often. At least not yet. Virtual Machines in HyperV offer me all this functionality with just a little more effort.

Pros in Windows Sandbox

However, there are of course still a bunch of good reasons to use Windows Sandbox. The start time is incredibly short. Therefore it’s a great feature for 

• visiting suspicious websites
• installing and testing unreliable software