Comment by out-of-ideas
Comment by out-of-ideas a day ago
there are api monitoring tools; my goto is this: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pro...
MS had a tool that let you set an applications "observed" system variables, like OS ect; this was back in win2000 and before now modernization of the windows compatibility stuff, new stuff sort of superseded it. i currently recollect the exe name even after inspecting a win2000 iso - edit2: apparently apcompat.exe ( lol this archive page triggered some memories: https://ia802200.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/33... )
edit: there were even api firewalls, zonealarm had one, and a number of others. i think people lost interest in locking their systems down as they seem very unpopular nowadays
It might have been Sandboxie. I don't remember where I got the dog reference (not god, typo in the original post), but it seems to have been a classic Windows MFC app, and it does date back to 2004, so it would fit the timeframe. I don't remember using it much, I guess configuration was cumbersome, as it generally is for these kinds of per-app/per-permission manual configuration tools.