Nerdery,

Need some guidance here. I'm planning to purchase a vehicle specific scanning software (Toyota Techstream) with a dedicated reader from eBay. The software is typically subscription based and the eBay purchase is likely a crack. Due to the questionable origin of the software, I had planned to buy a Dell refurb laptop with the intent to only be used for this scanning tool.

eBay link

I know very little about network and laptop setup in general, but I'm assuming that best practices here are to set up this laptop and have it usable for the scan software only and that I should keep it off any local networks. Assuming I should download the files to a usb drive and transfer over for install that way?

Or is there some limited network access I can grant this new machine and not have to worry about some larger issue? If I'm not worried about the laptop itself, or any of the data that may be saved to the laptop, should I be worried about the origins of the software?

Is there another way to set up the laptop to create a partition that only houses the software while keeping the laptop usable for other things if I wanted to do that down the road? At this point I only have my company issued laptop and an old MBP that I use when necessary for taxes, banking, investing, etc, hence the idea behind a throw away Dell refurb.

Any help is appreciated.

Definitely don't use your work laptop, and agree with the idea of a dedicated machine for endeavors like this. Only other thing I'd recommend is to stand up a VM to run tools like this in. I had something similar going on with a BMW diagnostic package that ran best on Windows XP (gasp). Was way easier to just make a VM for that and then map the OBD2/USB dongle through to the VM.

Set up a guest network with no LAN subnet access on your router and use that for the laptop.

Agree, wasn't pushing the VM angle for a lot of extra security, but more because most of these vehicle diagnostic tools seem to want a specific OS with things set up a certain way that doesn't translate well into a general purpose machine. Plus if you trash something you just blow away the VM and try again (or restore from a known good image).

Good call on the free wifi at Starbucks. Would there be any risk in using a cellular hotspot?

Also, kind of sucks to have the laptop be a throw away. Assume its still best practice to run windows defender and avast in the event I want to wipe and do a clean windows install and then use the machine for something else?