One little thing, Orwell. Once you have XP installed, with Office 207, and anything else you want (including Windows Update), take a snapshot of the whole XP.vdi file. That way, if the whole thing gets wrecked, it will take a few of minutes to get back to a working system.
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And... just how do you do the Windows Update without a network connection? It's rather non-trivial.
Although you seem to want to skip installing an AV, I'm not at all sure that's a good idea. My sequence was to:
- Download an AV elsewhere (e.g. AVG), and put it on a stick/CD/shared folder/partition/whatever's handy.
- Install XP, with no internet.
- Install the AV.
- Connect to the internet and get updates.
I do the above no matter whether it's a VirtualBox install or a "real" install.
You could follow the above pattern, then turn off the internet connection and remove the AV. You must then be very careful to scan any flash drives, CD/DVDs, and so on, elsewhere, before letting them near your vulnerable XP - plus you can never update it. (Unless you download an up-to-date AV again...)
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"Striking up conversations with strangers is an autistic person's version of extreme sports."
Kamran Nazeer
22 Dec 2008, 6:29 am
