Question about an XP virtual machine

[Pugchucker]

I am trying to keep all computing activities anonymous at home. I was thinking that the best way to do this would be to set up a virtual machine, but I have never done this before. Can someone tell me what is involved in switching back and forth between VM and main XP install? Is it easy? Will people casually using the machine be aware that there is also a VM on that computer and be able to access it or can you make the VM secret or password protect it in any way? Will cache files (or anything, for that matter) be shared between the VM and main XP install? I was also planning on running Torpark on the VM for extra security.

 

[Noema]

I have more experience with Virtual PC than with VMWare Server... AFAIK Virtual PC doesn't offer an option to password protect the install, but of course the guest XP install can be protected via password just like any XP install. In other words people would be able to boot up the guest machine but not log into XP.

As for switching back and forth, it's literally as easy as alt-tabbing. The virtual machine will run within its own Window inside the host OS. If the Virtual PC enhancements are installed, you can drag and drop files from the virtual machine to the host and viceversa easily. As for cache files being shared, the virtual machine has its own virtual hard drive (which the host sees as a big single monolithic file), so the answer would be no.

As for people 'casually' stumbling into the Virtual Machine...unless they are savvy, I doubt they'll have any clue as to what it is and how to operate it.

 

[Nothinman]

In other words people would be able to boot up the guest machine but not log into XP.

Except that if they really cared they'd be able to download any of the password reset tools on the Internet, tell VPC/VMWare where the ISO is and boot from that to break into the VM. It's even less work than doing it on a physical machine. You might be able to password the BIOS in VMWare, but I've never tried that.

As for people 'casually' stumbling into the Virtual Machine...unless they are savvy, I doubt they'll have any clue as to what it is and how to operate it.

It takes savviness to bring up a window that you're not sure what it is, notice it has another copy of Windows in it that works just like the one that you're currently using and then start using it?

 

[MrChad]

Anonymous from whom? Family members? The government?

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: MrChad
Anonymous from whom? Family members? The government?

I'm not really sure how using a VM keeps a person anonymous. The only real benefit I can see is that a person can use it, then shut it down, and have it not save anything, so your browsing history and such disappears. So it would provide the ability for people using that system to keep their adventures on that system hidden. It will not provide anominity to the external world.

 

[quikah]

I have no experience with Virtual PC, but with VMware server you can set the virtual disk to be non-persistent once you have it setup. that means nothing is saved to the disk. So once you shutdown all your data from that browsing session is gone.

 

[thegorx]

truecrypt ?

"Anonymous from whom?"

That's a good question, ever wonder who runs proxy servers ?
Do you think they keep tabs on people using their severs ?
Maybe if you use a few proxy servers you might be anonymous but you'd have a very slow connection.

 

[Pugchucker]

Thanks for all the responses, this has been very useful. I am not doing anything especially worrisome for outside agencies snooping on me. I do want to keep the family from having any access to surfing habits. The wife also tends to snoop around b-day time and finds out all the surprises before she gets them. The kids get into everything. No one at home is particularly saavy and would likely never even know about a VM, let alone know how to access it.

with VMware server you can set the virtual disk to be non-persistent once you have it setup. that means nothing is saved to the disk.

This seems like the best idea. I really would prefer to have nothing saved to the disk. I don't really know the differences between the different options people have raised here. I only even found out about this by reading MAximumPC and saw that they use a Virtual Machine to download email attachments without having to worry about viruses and such.

 

[MrChad]

Why not simply set up a separate user account for yourself on the PC and password protect it? If you're extra paranoid about surfing habits, Firefox has some extensions (like Distrust) that eliminate history items, cache and cookies after you close the browser.