I've noticed this with a few legacy games I've captured but have re-created the same behaviour with a simple notepad replacement, notepad2-mod.
I've used a clean VM, captured a file-drop of the Notepad files.
- Finished capture
- WriteCopy as the default mode.
- Enabled the cmd.exe debug hook.
- Sandbox is within the folder of the package - a la portable mode.
On the host PC, I've built the package with no alteration at all.
When I run notepad2.exe, things work well. If I create a subfolder and text file within 'InstallDir', it's stored in the sand box.
Multiple edits are fine and all written to disk and reflected within the application perfectly on successive launches.
If I then MOVE the contents of the Bin folder, as if I'm publishing it or copying it to local storage (or a different drive in this case) and then run the application again, I cannot see some of the sandbox content. See screen grab - virtualised app is in red square, showing oldest data file. Blue sqaure is the local disk (non-virtualised view), indicating the ThinApp is somehow confused.
The files are still on the disk! It's like the registry content that 'describes' the sandbox content is sensitive to the sandbox location and is corrupted when the package is moved?
If I copy/move the files out of the sandox, then CMD into the package and copy them back in, they can be seen by the application - for that launch/session.
It's like the engine cannot update the indexes in the registry (VMware ThinApp 5 Documentation Center - Making changes to the sandbox - this is where I got the clue to CMD into the package and copy the files in)