[Qemu-devel] [QEMU] Windows 2000 image Startup Problems

[Massimo Callegari <e_mc2@email.it>]

Hi, I'm facing a problem not yet fully documented or experienced in the
mailing lists I navigated 'till now, and, in any case, not really solved so
far, for what I know. Here is the description of the situation.

I installed a Windows 2000 Image with Qemu (0.6.0-3.1 and qemu-0.6.1-3.1
released via rpm package) under different Linux installations (a Suse PRO
9.2 distribution and a Fedora Core 2/3 versions).

The steps performed to obtain this are the following:

* Creation of a qcow image:

         $ qemu-img create -f img Win2000.img 10000M   or  $ qemu-mkcow
create Win2000.qcow 10G

* Copy of the installation CD of Windows 2000 on the local hard disk

         $ dd if=/dev/cdrom of=Win2000.iso

* Installation of Windows 2000 on the Qemu image:

         $ qemu -boot d -cdrom Win2000.iso -hda Win2000.qcow/img

The installation proceeeds without (almost) any problem and ends
successfully, but, when I try to load the newly created image ($ qemu
Win2000.qcow/img) the system boot ends up with an error message ("Booting
from Hard Disk ... Disk Read Error. Press CTRL+ALT+CANC to restart") like if
the mbr of the image were not present or if the partition table didn't
recognize a bootable sector on the "virtual" disk.

Notice that the problem doesn't appear 'till the boot of the system is based
on the cdrom-based install process as far as windows warm boots (in other
words the first time I face the problem is when I cold boot and start my
Windows 2000 image with the Qemu command "$ qemu Win2000.qcow/img". The same
doesn't happen if I rely on the newly made installation and on the related
command "$ qemu -boot d -cdrom Win2000.iso -hda Win2000.qcow/img". In that
case the error message is the one reported above).

I tried to boot the system from cdrom with "qemu -boot d -cdrom Win2000.iso
-hda Win2000.qcow/img" like during installation and in that case the error
message is the same.

I noticed that 'till now the only way to have a good bootable image is via
the creation of the Qemu image file with the qemu-mkcow command (for me it
was the only case in which it worked for the windows 2000 installation and
cold boot) on the Suse 9.2 installation with the qemu-0.6.0-3.1 rpm package
installed. All other tests failed.

Did anyone afford and solve this issue (apart from modifying by commenting
out line 1896 in hw/ide.c) ?

I think a definitive solution could made the Emulator more stable and
usable.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

Massimo