Disable internet access in XP VM but keep local network

Question

I'm using Windows XP in Virtualbox for some legacy development and my IT department freaks out (rightly so) about XP being on the network. While I can simply disconnect the network access and be done with it, I'm planning on building this VM so that I can distribute it to other members of my team who may need access to legacy tools. I'd rather have the VM boot up with internet access already disabled (independent of Virtualbox and/or VMWare installations - this setup will be running in both).

However, the nature of my work (embedded systems) often requires me to create local networks with the hardware I'm developing/fixing (high-voltage power supplies for X-ray and CT machines) So usually what we do is we have multiple network cards: one for internet access and another for development purposes. We'll change the IP address settings of the development card to a standard, manual static address (192.168.1.4) and leave the internet card properties alone. This enables us to talk to the web (for Google and other miscellaneous uses, we don't need to connect the power supplies to the internet directly) and develop for our devices.

Now the issue is that some of our development software is legacy (Metroworks Codewarrior, VB6) and they run best in XP. I'd still like to be able to develop in XP and talk to our boards from the XP VM. However, I do not want the VM to access the internet (however, the host machine should still be able to access the internet).

I saw some other answers on here relating to this, such as this one, but I'm wondering if there's other ways given that I'm running in a VM on a host machine.

Answer 1

If you are connecting to a central VM server

The easiest thing to do would be block all traffic going out of the network or coming from the internet that is directed to or from that IP address of the server. If you do this anyone on LAN can still access the computer but no internet access as long as the IP stays the same.

If you are connecting to just your computer and only you need access to the VM and the VM does not need access to anything

If you want only the one host machine to have access to the vm then you can setup a "host only network" or even fully disable the VM's NIC card from the VM management software. Any popular VM software (virutalbox / vm workstation) will have this ability.

If you need XP VM to have access to the specific static NIC noted above

Give the VM only access to the physical adapter card for connecting to those devices then for the static info of the VM to match so it can only communicate with those devices