Bootable Windows USB just to run virtualbox ?

[Sylvester]

I would like to create a bootable USB with a Windows operating system,
whose sole purpose would be to run a virtualbox container which would boot an image on another drive.
Anyone done this with Windows ? Which version worked for you ? I want to avoid 8 and above
as I don't want to deal with all the MS crapware and spying that Windows 8+ does.

Also, is it possible to disable networking on the host OS entirely, while still having it inside the guest ?
This would be for security reasons, as the purpose of the host is just to run Virtualbox and nothing else.
Thanks a lot!

[BillG]

It makes no difference where you boot the host machine from. If you want to boot from USB, go ahead.

If you only want to run VirtualBox on this machine, that's fine. You do not need a network connection on the host to communicate between host and guest. You use the built-in (but not enabled by default) host only network setting. This would work fine in Win 7 and probably XP as well.

[mpack]

Also, is it possible to disable networking on the host OS entirely, while still having it inside the guest ?

If by that you mean that you want the guest to still have Internet access, then that is possible too. Just disable TCP/IP support in the host services attached to the NIC. The guest must then use bridged networking, and attach to the same NIC.

[Sylvester]

Also, is it possible to disable networking on the host OS entirely, while still having it inside the guest ?

If by that you mean that you want the guest to still have Internet access, then that is possible too. Just disable TCP/IP support in the host services attached to the NIC. The guest must then use bridged networking, and attach to the same NIC.

thanks, yes this is what I meant. Do you know if using bridged networking involves some of the guest's network traffic being cached on the host hard drive or does network traffic to and from the guest completely bypass the host hard drive (the virtualbox image I will be mounting is on a different hard drive from the host) ?
My aim is to completely separate the host from the guest OS. Ideally the host hard drive would be read only, but of course that's not possible with Windows.

[mpack]

Bridged networking means that low level Ethernet driver on the host NIC is used, but higher layers in the protocol stack, such as IP and TCP, are implemented by the VM. To all intents and purposes you have two PCs on an Ethernet switch, and what one PC does the other PC ignores.

[Sylvester]

Bridged networking means that low level Ethernet driver on the host NIC is used, but higher layers in the protocol stack, such as IP and TCP, are implemented by the VM. To all intents and purposes you have two PCs on an Ethernet switch, and what one PC does the other PC ignores.

Thanks. I'm trying to set up a secure environment for the guest system, making sure it does not leak data onto the host.
That is the reason I'm asking.
If I run Virtualbox from the host, would it create some sort of cache of the guest's network traffic on the host's hard drive when using bridge networking ?
If it does create some sort of cache, possibly in the Appdata folder of the host user and temporarily stores network traffic there,
this would be a leak onto the host hard drive.

[mpack]

The host does not see the guests Internet traffic, so it certainly won't cache anything. The host - if it cares to - can see loads of Ethernet traffic. If you want me to promise that your host doesn't have anything installed that can log Ethernet traffic, I can't. But it isn't standard. It could only be done with a packet sniffer layer installed below the similar one which redirects traffic to the VM.