Re: [Qemu-devel] -win2k-hack needed to do Windows Update?

[Brad Campbell <brad@wasp.net.au>]

Andrew Barr wrote:
> Hi again. I'm still working on my Windows 2000 SP4 VM, and I've discovered 
> that running Windows Update (Internet Explorer 6) causes behavior similar to 
> the "disk full" bug encountered during Windows 2000 setup. When it gets to 
> the part where it's looking for updates (the green scrolling bar), there is 
> excessive disk activity and the VM slows down significantly. This is both 
> with and without -kernel-kqemu. I've monitored the size of the disk image 
> while the VM thrases away, and it steadily gets larger. I've not let it 
> completely fill up, but I've seen it add 2 gigabytes to the disk size in the 
> space of fifteen minutes. Just for kicks, I added -win2k-hack to my bootup 
> options and tried Windows Update. It's running now--so far so good but the 
> disk is working a bit much for my taste. At least it is moving forward, 
> albeit a bit slowly. I just thought I'd mention this here because I've not 
> seen this behavior documented anywhere else.

I've reproduced this with a vanilla 2kSP4 install (IE 5) and all patches up to the latest and 
greatest. I've tried with Leo's win2k-hack patch that only delays every 16th (iirc) irq and that 
seems to work also, but perhaps it was not as reliable (I've done so many tests my memory may not be 
that flash).

Anyway. -win2k-hack gets windows update working on 2k here also.


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