Re: Windows XP support

[Frantisek Rysanek]

Hmm... I second that note about forcing a particuar HAL using F5 
during XP installer, just before F6 for the driver floppy.

Note that you probably do not need to disable ACPI in QEMU (the 
hypervisor). By selecting a non-ACPI HAL during XP installation, you 
should end up not using ACPI in the guest, even if available from the 
host/SeaBIOS.
It seems that indeed the SeaBIOS supports the MPS tables.
This is an extension to the APM standard PC, allowing for multiple 
CPU cores *and IO-APIC IRQ's*, without having to resort to ACPI.
So, the XP HAL of my choice would be "MPS multiprocessor PC".
Forcing this MPS HAL by pressing F5 during XP installation, is 
actually one way of achieving multi-processor and APIC-enabled 
install of WinXP on the BayTrail platform, whose ACPI is too new for 
XP.

I guess I've heard someone suggest that it was possible to change the 
HAL in a finished/live install of WinXP. Similar to updating a driver 
for a peripheral controller. You need the installed image of WinXP to 
be live = you need to do this still in the original VM (VMware). 
Should be easy to try in a VM, on a disposable snapshot of the golden 
master XP image :-)

One more note regarding storage controller drivers:
QEMU-KVM offers several emulated options: IDE, some legacy SCSI 
controllers, and the generally preferred modern model is VirtIO. To 
the guest, the VirtIO storage controller appears as a SCSI HBA on 
PCI, needs a dedicated driver. Apparently, the Virtio F6 Floppy for 
XP is no longer easy to find. There's a link to some "web archive" in 
one of the websites I will refer to below.

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/91542-solved-windows-xp-help/

https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/viostor/installatio
n

I recall that XP had a problem getting installed on bare metal Intel 
AHCI controllers, even using Intel's official F6 Floppy for the 
hardware and XP. The same chipset configured for IDE mode would work 
fine. In qemu, I guess AHCI is a non-issue. IIRC.

Frank



From:   nick wells <nwell789@gmail.com>
To:     "qemu-discuss@nongnu.org" <qemu-discuss@nongnu.org>
Subject:        Re: Windows XP support
Date sent:      Wed, 11 Sep 2024 16:23:21 +0000

> 
> Recently, I have been able to install XP as a guest within qemu using
> Q35 machine by turning off ACPI in machine type settings and manually
> selecting "Standard PC" HAL type after pressing F5 during XP setup.
> ACPI can work with the MPS uni-processor and multi-processor HAL Types
> if ACPI is needed. You can also press F7 during setup to bypass
> HAL/ACPI selection entirely. This works for windows 2k guests as well.