Virtual Home Lab Setup for Cybersecurity - Part 6: Windows VM Setups
Part 6 - VM Installation & Setup
Overview
In this part, we’ll setup our four Windows 10/11 VMs. Before we proceed, make sure you have the Windows 10 and Windows 11 ISO files required. Make sure the firewall & server are both running before proceeding.
Windows 11 Installation
In VirtualBox, select “New” to create a new VM. Give it a suitable name and change the hard disk size to 100GB. Check the “Skip Unattended Installation” box. Leave all other settings the same. Once created, select the VM and then “Settings”. Under “Network” change “Adapter 1” to “Internal Network” on “LAN 2”.
Under “System”, select “Motherboard”. Toggle off “Enable EFI (special OSes only)” and then modify the boot order to match the below. Once done, toggle “Enable EFI (special OSes only)” back on.
Finally, in “Display”, choose “Enable 3D Acceleration” and increase the video memory to 256MB.
Press “OK” to confirm, and “Start” to launch the VM. Once the VM starts, you will see “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD…” press any key here to boot from our ISO.
Click “Next” until you reach the “Select setup option” menu. Here, press SHIFT+F10 to open a console. In the console, type regedit. In the resulting registry window, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup. Right click the “Setup” folder and choose “New > Key”. Name the key “Virtualised”. Select your new key and right click the empty pane to the right of it. Select “New > DWORD (32-bit) Value”. Create three new values: BypassRAMCheck, BypassSecureBootCheck and BypassTPMCheck. Double click each value and set it to “1”. Your setup should look as follows:
Now, go back to the main window, click “I accept” and “Next” to proceed installing. Proceed with on screen instructions and let Windows 11 install. Note after the install, my Win 11 machines crashed out and I had to exit & restart them manually, after that the installation proceeded as expected.
When the VM reaches the “Select language” menu, you can power it down. Repeat the above steps to create a second Windows 11 VM with a different name. Mine are called “Win 11 VD01” and “Win 11 VD02”.
Windows 10 Installation
In VirtualBox, select “New” to create a new VM. Give it a suitable name and change the hard disk size to 100GB. Under “Hardware”, increase the “Base Memory” to 4096MB. Check the “Skip Unattended Installation” box. Leave all other settings the same. Once created, select the VM and then “Settings”. Under “Network” change “Adapter 1” to “Internal Network” on “LAN 2”.
Under “System”, select “Motherboard” and modify the boot order to match the below.
Press “OK” to confirm, and then “Start” to boot the VM. Once the VM boots, simply follow the on-screen instructions to complete the Windows installation. Make sure you choose “Custom” as the installation type when you reach that step. Once you reach “Lets start with region”, you can power the VM off.
Repeat the above steps to create a second Windows 10 VM with a different name. Mine are called “Win 10 VD01” and “Win 10 VD02”. Next, we’ll configure our AD users, and set them up on the VMs we have installed.