Using VM Software to keep a system stable?

[imzjustplayin]

What do you think of the idea that a user runs a virtual version of windows XP where they do all of their webbrowsing, e-mail, aim, software beta testing etc.. instead of on the local machine it's self? I have contemplated this idea and I'm thinking it's pretty fool proof, if they screw up 'the machine', worse case scenario you just load up another image of the OS and start from there again.

It'd be harder for viruses to make the "actual machine" worthless unless you installed it locally. I mention this because it'd allow you to have a clean, stream lined OS for running applications that need the power like video games or video encoding etc..

Since my sister uses her computer for both those things and typical tasks, she'd be less likely to screw up her machine when trying out a new video encoding program she downloaded online.


What do you think of this idea? To me, it's pretty much fool proof.

 

[pigster]

While a vitual machine is a pretty safe way of browsing, you can also safely browse websites by simply using a user (non-admin) account and using a browser like Firefox. It's not 100% safe, but it's pretty close to it.


" it'd allow you to have a clean, stream lined OS for running applications that need the power like video games or video encoding" - the problem is that a VM will not run at the same speed as an actual install, so you won't see the performance you're hoping for.

 

[imzjustplayin]

While a vitual machine is a pretty safe way of browsing, you can also safely browse websites by simply using a user (non-admin) account and using a browser like Firefox. It's not 100% safe, but it's pretty close to it.


" it'd allow you to have a clean, stream lined OS for running applications that need the power like video games or video encoding" - the problem is that a VM will not run at the same speed as an actual install, so you won't see the performance you're hoping for.

Yes but because it'd be mostly tasks intensive as webbrowsing and doing other such low end tasks, it wouldn't really matter anyways. All duties like Video games, Video/Audio encoding etc. would be done locally. You can't use a limited account due to the fact that there are so many programs out there you can't run with out requiring admin privileges.. I already tried the limited account thing for both her and I and have realized it's not practical at all.

Another reason why using a VM would be useful is that she could be chatting with her friends on the web, browsing aimlessly and then decide to get some actual work done locally. While it may not be the best way of doing things since it does take quite a few resources to run another OS, she'll or even I will be smart and realize she/I aren't getting work done while doing such things and tasks that need to be done are suffering because of this and so she can just close the OS and not have to think about it anymore.

Also ATM she still refuses to use FF.

 

[nessus]

While a vitual machine is a pretty safe way of browsing, you can also safely browse websites by simply using a user (non-admin) account and using a browser like Firefox. It's not 100% safe, but it's pretty close to it.

You realize that you can be logged in as an admin user, and use runas to run applications as a user with lower permissions as well. Mark Russinovich has an excellent article about configureing IE to run in a lower permission mode automatically in much the same way as IE 7+ on Vista.
Link

There are also some excellent comments about using group policy to do the same thing by some of the posters in the comments section as well as discussion of using VMs and fast user switching.

 

[pigster]

You realize that you can be logged in as an admin user, and use runas to run applications as a user with lower permissions as well.

That's a really good point, and something that I'm going to experiment with over the next few days.

 

[BBA]

What do you think of the idea that a user runs a virtual version of windows XP where they do all of their webbrowsing, e-mail, aim, software beta testing etc.. instead of on the local machine it's self? I have contemplated this idea and I'm thinking it's pretty fool proof, if they screw up 'the machine', worse case scenario you just load up another image of the OS and start from there again.

It'd be harder for viruses to make the "actual machine" worthless unless you installed it locally. I mention this because it'd allow you to have a clean, stream lined OS for running applications that need the power like video games or video encoding etc..

Since my sister uses her computer for both those things and typical tasks, she'd be less likely to screw up her machine when trying out a new video encoding program she downloaded online.


What do you think of this idea? To me, it's pretty much fool proof.

VM's are great for code seperation, testing software etc. Depending on how you make copies of your virtual hard drives, they have a built in go back feature so code testing is great.

The only drawbacks are direct x support and hardware features...VPC and VMware both pretty much limit you to crap hardware emulation, so you won;t be testing modern games on them.