Is there a windows equivalent to chroot?

Solution 1:

I'm not sure you will gain anything on Windows by chrooting - do you have a specfic need?

In case any the top result on google is http://www.winquota.com/wj/.

Perhaps application virtualization might be an option? Microsoft has the following to say about it:

In a physical environment, every application depends on its OS for a range of services, including memory allocation, device drivers, and much more. Incompatibilities between an application and its operating system can be addressed by either server virtualization or presentation virtualization; but for incompatibilities between two applications installed on the same instance of an OS, you need Application Virtualization.

Solution 2:

Sandboxie http://www.sandboxie.com/

Not exactly like chroot. It does setup a sandbox for each program you specify. It can easily keep processes isolated.

Solution 3:

To solve this specific need (program assumes it's running off of a root directory), the SUBST command is probably what you want. It's a holdover from DOS, and still exists in windows 10.

the SUBST command will mount a directory as a new drive letter.

then you can run the software from the newly created drive, and it will think it's on your new drive S if you run it from that path.