virus scanning boot camp disk from diff VM

[fcol313]

I have an XP Boot Camp partition but usually run it as a virtual machine. I haven't installed any anti-virus software since I can't stand the performance hit. I was thinking of installing Kaspersky Anti-Virus onto a separate VM, sharing the boot camp disk with the VM, and then scanning the shared boot camp disk via this other VM. I can't think of a reason of why this wouldn't work, but I don't want to take a chance of screwing up the Boot Camp partition. Has anyone done this?

[admin]

How are you planning to share the disk? Are you wanting to scan via Kaspersky at the same time you're using the Boot Camp virtual machine?

[fcol313]

I was going to just share via the Fusion-Virtual Machine-Settings-Enable Shared Disk function (and choose the entire "Untitled" Boot Camp partition as the shared folder). And no, I would make sure the Boot Camp VM was completely shut down. It's formatted as NTFS, if that matters. Thanks

[rcardona2k]

While I don't virus scan my Boot Camp partition but I regularly mount it as a secondary disk in a VM with no problems. I do this by manually editing my VM files. In fact I have multiple "Boot Camp" VMs which are nothing but clones of the official one, configured in slightly different ways.

Also my Boot Camp partition has Vista and I mount it on XP with no side-effects. If your Boot Camp partition is formatted with FAT32 then even OS X could scan it for viruses. Although I would not trust a virus scanner on the Mac for catching Windows viruses

[admin]

would make sure the Boot Camp VM was completely shut down. It's formatted as NTFS, if that matters. Thanks

I was going to just share via the Fusion-Virtual Machine-Settings-Enable Shared Disk function (and choose the entire "Untitled" Boot Camp partition as the shared folder).

I don't think a Shared Folder will work; those rely on OS X to read/write the filesystem, but by default OS X can't write to NTFS. Richard's suggestion (connecting the Boot Camp raw disk to the second virtual machine) is likely to work.

And no, I would make sure the Boot Camp VM was completely shut down.

Good, just making sure

Although I would not trust a virus scanner on the Mac for catching Windows viruses

Actually, I thought that was the whole point of Mac virus scanners - not to protect the Mac from infection (against what?), but rather to prevent it from acting as a carrier

[rcardona2k]

> > rcardona2k wrote:

> > Although I would not trust a virus scanner on the Mac for catching Windows viruses

Actually, I thought that was the whole point of Mac virus scanners - not to protect the Mac from infection (against what?), but rather to prevent it from acting as a carrier

Yeah, it's called "marketing" and I really like to spend money to protect Windows users too.

[fcol313]

Thanks. I didn't know I could mount the Boot Camp disk directly. I saw your post here:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/802300

I'll give it a try and report back. ( Edit: Does this post apply to using the Boot Camp disk as the secondary disk? Moving BC's .vmdk seems like trouble )

Admittedly, this virus scanning solution is pretty convoluted. It's probably easier to just install antivirus directly in the Boot Camp VM but disable it from auto-scans. I just prefer keeping the BC VM as lean as possible.

[admin]

Thanks. I didn't know I could mount the Boot Camp disk directly. I saw your post here:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/802300

I'll give it a try and report back. ( Edit: Does this post apply to using the Boot Camp disk as the secondary disk? Moving BC's .vmdk seems like trouble )

You probably don't want to move the .vmdk, but rather edit the .vmx config file to reference it. See if you need help getting at the .vmx file.