I'd like to load up my coins and try staking but still a bit spooked about the Virustotal reports.
Can anyone point me at a basic guide to setting up a local VM as have not done this before?
You can roughly follow these steps:
1. Download and install Oracle Virtual Machine (VirtualBox) and extensions
2. Decide on OS to run e.g. Windows 10 or Ubuntu 16.04
3. Make sure you have installation media and license if required for your guest OS
4. Run VM and create a local VDI and allocate memory and disk space
5. Install the guest OS from the media and patch it up
6. Spin up VM whenever needed.
I would recommend installing Ubuntu 16.04 as your guest OS. Then build Kek on it and run and stake. You could always get a Raspberry Pi and run it on the Pi. I built wallets for Pi.