Just to be complete I remember the challenge vmware.com is sending for people to make virtual appliances (pc or linux emulators with a complete os installed in the image). Personally I would be trying cygwin instead (and this is certainly a way for you to go to). But it also seems that for a lab pc you don't want to mess with, a virtual appliance might also be a valid option. You could bring updated versions of this virtual pc in on a CD. Otherwise I'd imagine cygwin or activestate would do at least a minimal amount of mucking about in the registry etc. when they get installed, unless say you just unzip to a folder.