How to set up a clean test machine for every test

Question

I want to know if there are any general guidelines that programmers in general and QA in particular follows for setting up a clean test system.

The system should be clean every day, free of any unwarranted dependencies (for instance .NET), free of ghosts from previous installs and tests conducted and fairly easy to image and change.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Use a virtual machine such as VirtualBox (or any other virtual machine product) to simply re-use the same exact image in your unit tests every single time. Very easy :-)

Answer 2

This is relatively simple. Either use a VM with snapshot capabilities, or load a copy of a virtual machine image, or use full system imaging (like Ghost). If you want to use a fully patched system, you'll want to update these every couple of months.

I would refrain from reimaging on a set schedule. I've done testing that spanned two or more workdays.