Arch Linux - Qemu not booting WinXP with PCI Passthrough

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Hey guys,

For some reason Qemu is not working with Windows XP on my host Arch Linux system, I can't seem to boot off an iso and I have a feeling the solution is very simple but I can't see it. First off I am booting my VMs using commands much like the one found on the Arch Linux's Wiki. The problem is while its suppose to boot off the cd I get the UEFI Interactive Shell and can't boot into anything. I suppose the obvious question is can you boot into Windows XP with UEFI?

Anyway here is the command I launching with,

I'll explain this the best I can,

m 2048 - gives the VM 2GB of ram
cpu host - emulates my native CPU
kvm=off - fixes a bug Nvidia has with PCI Passthrough
smp cores=4 - number of cores emulated
device vfio-pci,host=09:00.0 - Passthrough of my graphics card
device vfio-pci,host=00:12.0 - Passthrough of a USB controller
drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/edk2.git/ovmf-x64/OVMF_CODE-pure-efi.fd - my bios file
drive if=pflash,format=raw,file=/tmp/my_vars.fd - This is the only thing I am not sure on, I am following the wiki here
soundhw ac97 - Sound driver
cdrom ~/Windows\ XP/WinXP.iso - Windows XP image
hda windowsxp.qcow - Path to virtual hard drive

So this command should boot into Windows XP's installer but instead I get this



I am booting Windows 10 just fine with this command, and installed it by adding -cdrom /path/to/file as well, why is one working and not the other?

From MS:
"Given the advent of mainstream 64-bit computing and the platform costs previously discussed, Microsoft determined that vendors would not have any interest in producing native UEFI 32-bit firmware. Microsoft has therefore chosen to not ship support for 32-bit UEFI implementations."

So, assuming 32-bit WinXP, I'd say it won't work (IIR, the 64-bit won't either, but I've not tried it. I just changed the BIOS to MBR on physical machines some years back).

However, it should work if you can set QEMU to use a MBR (non-UEFI) firmware image (ie system BIOS) as QEMU had no problem running XP before UEFI was introduced.

Update: using an old pre-UEFI version of QEMU, I just booted an XP .ISO and a Win3.11WFW HDD image on a UEFI machine. So one way or another, it is doable.

Update #2 Also, this from the Ubuntu forums:

"qemu is packaged with seabios which is "non uefi" as in Legacy BIOS.
http://www.seabios.org/SeaBIOS "

That last might do the trick?

So it turns out that all I had to do was remove

from the command line and it booted straight into this,



However since UEFI is used in the PCI Passthrough wiki page on Arch Linux's main web site, I don't know if the devices that I have pass through to the guest will work. I don't know if the wiki paged used UEFI because thats the stranded now or if its needed for PCI passthough. I admit I feel a bit dumb for not seeing the 64-bit bios on qemu-system-i386

Thanks for the information though, you have at least got the ship sailing but I don't know if hardware passthrough will work.

Ok....

I am obviously not thinking this through clearly, I don't know why I thought a Geforce 980 would work on Windows XP. What I am trying to do is run old 16-bit code that are not dos executables. Would a 32-bit version of Windows 7 or 10 accomplish this? I am thinking that Windows XP might be too old for my needs.

16-bit support was dropped with the move to 64-bit Windows. 32-bit versions of Windows OS (desktop) through 8 & 32-bit Windows Server through 2008 can run 16-executables (including Windows 3.0 Program Manager, as I recently discovered), however it does so using a virtual machine (see thunking, shims & Windows on windows, or "WOW").

What sort of code are you trying to run, please, and what OS's do you have at your disposal?

Various 16-bit games I suppose, namely exile here. Their web site says it will work on 32-bit Windows 7 but I was wanting to run other 16 bit apps and games so I might shoot for a windows 95 install and just emulate the processor and video card instead of using native hardware. Everything I plan to run is old enough that might work, I am also going to try wine and just use that if it works.

I have

Windows 95
Windows XP
Windows 7 64-bit
Windows 10 (Upgrade only)

Okay I think wine will work actually, no problems yet though I dislike wine due to its numerous bugs.