Ooh! I just successfully installed Virtualbox, and I'm hooked!

[kyrathaba]

Just successfully installed Virtualbox, then installed Win XP Pro virtually.  Really cool stuff, I'm hooked!

[Renegade]

Nice. I was never able to get it to work properly last I tried. (I abandoned it and went for VMware.)

[kyrathaba]

Worked flawlessly.

[kyrathaba]

I'm installed version 4.1xxx

[kyrathaba]

Some time ago, one of the computers in our house got hosed after someone downloaded and ran a disreputable registry compactor.  Question: if they'd been running a guest OS in a VM, I could just have terminated the guest OS and restarted it, and we'd have been okay, right? Not that you'd necessarily be trying to compact the registry from a guest OS, but you get the idea...

[mouser]

Question: if they'd been running a guest OS in a VM, I could just have terminated the guest OS and restarted it, and we'd have been okay, right?

if it messed up the guest os then simply restarting the guest os wouldn't necesarily have saved it from being messed up, BUT you can very easily make SNAPSHOTS of the guest os so you could have reset it to the last good stable setup in 60 seconds.

[kyrathaba]

What actually happened, according to the IT guy that repaired the PC, is that the MBR got corrupted.  So, if the (assumed virus-laden) program had been running in a guest OS, it wouldn't have been able to harm the actual host OS's MBR, right?

[mouser]

So, if the (assumed virus-laden) program had been running in a guest OS, it wouldn't have been able to harm the actual host OS's MBR, right?

right*.



* there is a very very tiny theoretically chance that the virus could be programmed with an exploit specifically designed specifically to break through the virtual machine if they can find an exploit to do so, but the chances of this actually happening to you seem negligible.

[ewemoa]

I tend to keep snapshots of my initial installation + updates so I can revert.

On a related note, for VMware player, AFAIU, there is no snapshot capability so I keep a backup of the whole directory where the guest OS is stored for restoration purposes.

Crashing Host OS

VirtualBox had been quite good until it repeatedly started restarting my host machine (!!) -- this only started happening recently, and as I understand it, the culprit is one of the many Active X controls that financial sites (in a land Renegade is familiar with) force on the user.

That got me to try out VMware player, and that didn't suffer the same problem.

However, if you do some searches you'll probably find that both VirtualBox and VMware products have had problems with some Active X controls.  So my conclusion is to keep both handy - diversification may be our friend here.

I haven't heard of other major host-os-killing situations though, so perhaps you won't ever be effected

[kyrathaba]

Thanks for the info, E.  I'm mainly interested in having a VM available to try out "iffy" programs for awhile, in order to decide if I dare install them on my host OS.

[steeladept]

VBox is great.  I have been using it off and on for over 3 years now, and various VMware products for about 3 years prior to that.  I am a BIG Virtualization fan.  There are issues with it - don't get me wrong - but they are fairly small, compared to the advantages, and fairly rare for the common person to even find. I can't wait until they perfect the client-side, type I hypervisor - but that will likely have to come from Microsoft itself - or maybe from Linux somewhere.  Citrix XenClient is so almost there!

What is the difference you ask?  XenClient and other type I hypervisors install INSTEAD of the OS prior to installing your OS so you can essentially duel-boot into one or more OS's at the same time.  This is different from VirtualBox/VMware Player/etc. in that these get installed IN the OS and require at least 2 OS's running at the same time.  Big deal, you might say, but it is really nice to have near native performance (typically > 90% of native with some reports north of 98% of native speed) on a machine running 4 or more OS's at the same time.  You just can't do that with a type II hypervisor such as VirtualBox (though they do give it a good shot).  If you are ever building a server you may want to give something like ESXi a try.  It is a good type I hypervisor that will blow your socks off.  It doesn't support a lot of different hardware - especially video cards - which is why it is really relegated to the server room though.  There is a lot more to it too, but the unsupported hardware is the biggest reason to not try it on just any system.

[KynloStephen66515]

Just successfully installed Virtualbox, then installed Win XP Pro virtually.  Really cool stuff, I'm hooked!