Windows Tor Vidalia bundle Setup
This tutorial will teach you how to setup the tor Vidalia bundle with latest tor exe files so you can easily have an auto start tor Vidalia process/proxy on boot without having to do command line shenanigans with their expert bundle.
First off I want to state that they for whatever reason no longer provide updates to the windows tor Vidalia bundle since like 2012 which is sad as it’s so helpful. Unsure of the reason for the lack of updates, but my tutorial will help you get setup and patch the bundles old tor with the latest version.
First off for those curious I grabbed the most recent tor Vidalia bundle from their archive.
Main file you need is
They signed it as well so feel free to check the file checksum if you’re feeling extra paranoid.
Now what you want to do is install this Vidalia bundle, but do not install the tor button in options. Once installed do not run it yet if prompted.
Now that we have the Vidalia gui installed we can update the tor binary exes with the latest version from the tor expert bundle. Which provides an up to date tor install along with the Vidalia gui for easy start stop/change identity options and whatnot and for easy always on proxy support via socks5 for apps like pidgin/electrum/ or whatever you need to torrify.
To update the tor binary exes we can update tor by grabbing the latest tor expert bundle for windows from their site
https://dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/5.0.6/tor-win32-0.2.7.6.zip
Now download and unzip this into the directory
C:\Program Files (x86)\Vidalia Bundle\Tor
This should overwrite the old tor exes and whatnot
Make sure you extract the data directory from the zip into the tor Vidalia directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Vidalia Bundle\Tor) as well as into root of the Vidalia install (C:\Program Files (x86)\Vidalia Bundle) as well
Your directories should look like mine below.
Now you can start Vidalia bundle and it should connect to tor and be using latest version of tor with the Vidalia gui.
Now you can use localhost:9050 for any apps you want to proxy with tor via socks 5.
Compatibility
Windows
This is known to work on windows 7,8,8.1,10 and probably xp if for whatever reason your using that still.
Possibly work for MAC??? Needs testing
I believe this method should work for MAC as well as I see they have dmg image there too. Patching that with new binaries should be be fairly simple for any MAC enthusiast.
Linux
Vidalia bundle is also in Opensuse extra repos for those looking for an easy way to use installs easily via 1click yast and is nice OS with security updates and linux desktop with gui.
https://software.opensuse.org/package/vidalia
Category:Security
