[seanwilson]

Could you run your experiments on something like AWS EC2 or Digital Ocean? Likely cheaper and they're easy to start from a clean slate.

[brudgers]

Mightn't VM aware malware become aware of the VM and behave differently?

[seanwilson]

Most likely. What would be the plan for how to quickly reset the state of the malware laptop though?

[brudgers]

See the approach outlined in my direct response to the OP.