Windows 10 - Auto launch of virtual machine on user login?

briany

Building a new computer soon and will be using Windows 10. Planning on setting up separate user accounts. Young nephew uses it sometimes for gaming, so I'll give him an account. I can lock his account down, of course, by having him as a standard user and implementing policies, and I will lock the account down, but I'd like to reduce my admin duties as much as possible by giving him a sandboxed environment instead where he can have all his little games installed without potentially affecting my new machine. My idea was to have a Hyper-V machine that launches as he logs into his user account, and is full screen, and has been running since the computer booted up, so the effect would be that the fact that it's a VM would be transparent to him. Is this possible/workable?

smuggler.ie

Are you talking about both of you working from same hardware?

Theoretically it should be possible, but i have not tried and can't comment on "end user experience"

You could try:
1. Set local user for nephew.
2. Set VM to start with host PC(i think is enabled by default)
3. Set nephew as user on VM( permissions? user/admin ). Make sure you have admin account for yourself.
3. Configure RDP connection to VM(full screen, remove connection bar, save credentials, etc.) and save it as Nephew.rdp
4. Set task to run on startup to launch that rdp(trigger - at log on + specific user)

Potential problems:
1. There is no Shutdown option on RDP - Disconnect or Sign out -after any power option he choose, he will be presented with local session, unless you set another task (trigger - on disconnect from user session + connection from remote computer)to shutdown PC(host)
2.RDP connection bar still might appear for few seconds on session startup and its fully functional(can minimize or disconnect), but then will be gone. I didn't look into it - might be there is way to get rid of it for good.
3. In case VM would not start up timely or any network issues, RDP connection might/will fail and user will be presented with local session and error message.

4. Many other.


In case some go wrong, you might face more troubleshooting problems than administering local standard user

Note: Production VM should be treated same way as ordinary PC (individual antivirus, updates, etc.)


As i said - have not tried this, might later some time, so share experience if you go for it.


Other opinions welcome