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

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

[Andrew Barr]

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.

In case you didn't read my earlier message, I'm running Win2K SP4 on QEMU CVS 
with -kernel-kqemu and kqemu 1.3.0pre3. Host is Linux 2.6.16 (Debian sid).

-- 
Andrew Barr			| 1024D/AD9AE76A
andrew.james.barr@gmail.com	| http://www.oakcourt.dyndns.org/~andrew

And now for something completely different.

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

[Brad Campbell]

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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