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Preciousss · 04:37 PM

OK, I'm sure most of you read that artcle from a few months ago where testers connected a virgin PC to the Internet and found it got swarmed by worms, etc. after a short time (At first it was 20 min. then another study came out that said 5 min). They said this wasn't even enough time to download all of M$'s patches or updated virus definitions. Even around Christmas time, I read about increased activity from malware authors since they anticipated many new PC owners to open their presents and hook them up to the Internet.

Anyway. I just got Virtual PC 7 and am wondering how, if at all, this should affect my installation of XP Pro. One of the ways around this dilemma that I've heard about is to download all of the patches to a flash drive or disc, and apply them to Windows. This saves one from even having to connect to the Internet without them.

Any best practices for installing Windows with Virtual PC that addresses this? Or should I even be worried (and if not, why not)?

Thanks so much.

edit: Found that pdf on Surviving the first day of XP referenced in the link above. Forgot about the firewall here at work, so I'm guessing I should be fine? Also, forgot that thing I've seen here about disabling shared networking between your virtual machine and your Mac. Will doing all of this beforehand take care of everything so I can merrily install patches?

typoon · Feb 22, 2005, 04:49 PM

I usually tell people with a PC that has a fresh install of XP on it to download ALL the updates before getting online. I had someone not listen to me and he got a virus almost instantly.

OAW · Feb 22, 2005, 05:37 PM

But isn't that the problem? You have to get online in order to download the updates. And the Windows box gets infected before you can complete this task?

OAW

typoon · Feb 22, 2005, 05:48 PM

Originally posted by OAW:
But isn't that the problem? You have to get online in order to download the updates. And the Windows box gets infected before you can complete this task?

OAW

Not usually. from my experience anyway. Once you start browsing and doing email that is when you have a problem if you haven't updated

OAW · Feb 22, 2005, 05:54 PM

Certainly email and browsing increase the chances of infection dramatically. But the gist of articles such as this ....

http://news.com.com/Study:+Unpatched...3-5313402.html

... is that there are Windows worms running around all over the internet looking for unprotected PCs to infect that require no user interaction at all such as opening an attachment in email or browsing a malicious website. So the $64,000 question is how does one protect a PC and connect to the internet to download the latest patches in such a manner that avoids such infections? Connect from behind a router? Enable a firewall first? Etc.

OAW

ryju · Feb 23, 2005, 10:39 AM

My Windows XP install on VPC7 hasn't had any viruses or any spyware/adware. I have absolutely no kind of protection against that stuff, but I did download the updates and SP2.

Some people are just lucky I guess.

Millennium · Feb 23, 2005, 12:15 PM

I don't know if it's possible to disable shared networking, download updates on the Mac side, and then use folder sharing to transfer them to the PC.

If it works, though, then it would definitely be a good solution. How does one download the updates from a Mac, though? Usually Microsoft doesn't allow that, or at least makes it very difficult.

Goldfinger · Feb 23, 2005, 12:43 PM

Originally posted by Millennium:
I don't know if it's possible to disable shared networking, download updates on the Mac side, and then use folder sharing to transfer them to the PC.

If it works, though, then it would definitely be a good solution. How does one download the updates from a Mac, though? Usually Microsoft doesn't allow that, or at least makes it very difficult.

Even if you could download them esily it would be hell of a job with the milions of patches that exist.