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#1 2017-09-05 17:37:21

penguin
Member
From: Gotham City
Registered: 2010-12-31
Posts: 163

QEMU/KVM with Windows XP Guest video drivers?

Hi!

I'm running QEMU/KVM (via virt-manager) to run a Windows XP guest OS, so that I can relive some old games from 2000-2003. I have a top-of-the-line computer at the moment, and was hoping virtualization would at least be able to start the games, however, it seems like the guest OS cant find the video hardware, or rather, everything I try to run crashes.

I'm trying to understand if there's anything I'm missing here.
I've installed the "Spice windows guest tools", and it seems to work fine, and I've selected the QXL driver as one should.

Is there some kernel module I should load that provides more "juice", or something else I'm missing?

I've also found that my google-fu seems to be very weak in this issue, so I'm glad for any pointers.

For instance, looks like I should have 16 MB of video RAM, but games refuse to start saying I don't even have 12 Mb.

2017_09_05_191812_477x661_scrot.png
2017_09_05_190634_636x443_scrot.png

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#2 2017-09-06 12:01:42

ronnylov
Member
Registered: 2010-12-21
Posts: 65

Re: QEMU/KVM with Windows XP Guest video drivers?

For gaming you probably need to pass a real GPU to virtual machine in order to get better gaming performance.
There is this guide in the wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PC … h_via_OVMF

However Windows XP does not support UEFI so you should use Seabios instead of OVMF.
Your computer need to support IOMMU to passthrough a GPU.
I think you may find more information in this old thread but it might be a bit outdated:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768

Another problem might be that a GPU that is new enough to support PCI passthrough may still be too new to have working drivers for Windows XP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_I … rdware#AMD
But you can add one of the older supported cards. I read somewhere that AMD cards are good for passthrough.
You would need one GPU for host and the other one dedicated for the VM.

Edit: Another option could be trying to play the games with wine in Linux instead of using a VM.

Last edited by ronnylov (2017-09-06 12:04:45)

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