virtualbox.org

Hi,

I have a Linux host. Today I put a fixed (static) image for Windows XP of 4.3 gb. I successfully installed XP as a guest. However, I have 3 questions:

1) I have a router connecting to my computer. Will this protect a virtual (guest) computer? Windows in this case.
2) I installed XP and made no updates, additional installs, etc. However, I noticed I had already used about 2.0 gb out of 4.3 gb. Did I do something wrong or is this normal? I found a few posts on this site using the search function that were related to "dynamic" images but they were not helpful. I have a fixed image.
3) If I end up needing more space than what could fit on a DVD, then is it possible to "compress" my virtual system (e.g., tar, rar, etc)? Doing so would allow me to make it fit on DVD for archive purposes.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks.

First of all, read the Forum Posting Guide, it says one topic per question. In this case, it would have been three topics, one for each question.

1) What do you think? A freshly installed system can be compromised within the first 72 hours if no update or whatever is applied. Get some protection already. The router does a bit, but not all.

2) That's normal. A clean install usually takes near 2 GB of space. Keep in mind that you also have a pagefile, which is near 1 GB or bigger, depending on how much RAM you set for the Guest.

3) The 4,3 you took as size is very low. My own XP is even bigger than that and I keep it lean and mean so it stays fast. You need at least twice that size (dual layer DVD). You can always use Winrar or the sort to break up the image into multiple archives and store those on a DVD.
I recommend that you use at least 15 GB for the VDI. Dynamic may also be better, because it won't use the whole 15 GB from the start, but it will grow to it slowly as you add more data.

Sasquatch wrote:First of all, read the Forum Posting Guide, it says one topic per question. In this case, it would have been three topics, one for each question.

1) What do you think? A freshly installed system can be compromised within the first 72 hours if no update or whatever is applied. Get some protection already. The router does a bit, but not all.

2) That's normal. A clean install usually takes near 2 GB of space. Keep in mind that you also have a pagefile, which is near 1 GB or bigger, depending on how much RAM you set for the Guest.

3) The 4,3 you took as size is very low. My own XP is even bigger than that and I keep it lean and mean so it stays fast. You need at least twice that size (dual layer DVD). You can always use Winrar or the sort to break up the image into multiple archives and store those on a DVD.
I recommend that you use at least 15 GB for the VDI. Dynamic may also be better, because it won't use the whole 15 GB from the start, but it will grow to it slowly as you add more data.

Sasquatch,

1) My thinking too

2) I did allocate 1 gb of physical ram for this virtual install to use.

3) If I had known it would have taken 2 gb then I would have made it bigger.

I figured it would be ok to stick all 3 of these questions in the same post since they were all related to the same issue (machine). Thanks for your help!

cat2005 wrote:I figured it would be ok to stick all 3 of these questions in the same post since they were all related to the same issue (machine).

That's true, it's all related. It was a hint for if you ever open a new topic again.

If you set 1 GB to the VM, then the pagefile is possibly 1-1,5 GB. The more RAM you have when installing Windows, the bigger the pagefile will get. It's actually absurd, it should be the other way around. My PC has 3 GB of RAM and the clean install allocated 2 GB minimum, with a maximum of 5-6 GB or something like that. I disabled the pagefile entirely, because of the amount of RAM the system has. Having 1 GB is a bit of the breaking point, you can do without if you don't do much with it, but it might be needed when you install some more programs.

Sasquatch wrote:

cat2005 wrote: The more RAM you have when installing Windows, the bigger the pagefile will get. It's actually absurd, it should be the other way around.

I am glad you confirmed that. I noticed it too and thought I did something wrong. I was about to do a clean install. Thanks!