Issues with Win2k3

[PTz0uAH]

Hoi @copy, thanks for this great emulator!

Host PC: Dell M4400
Host OS: Win7pro 64bits sp1
Host BROWSER: Firefox 115.25.0esr

• v86 version: 0eec2965 (Jun 12, 2025 19:06)
• v86 OS: Win2K3 sp2 Enterprise Edition 32bits
• v86 HDD: 2048MB FAT
• v86 VGA: 128MB
• v86 RAM: 768MB

I finally had Win2k3 running after a couple of hours patience and managed to enter the safe-boot mode..

Here some cool pictures:

I was very hopefull at first but 3 major problems arose which are a real "showstopper"..

1. v86 detects at boot an inserted floppy.img (which needed to be removed to boot into windows) yet windows does not recognise the 1440K nor the 720K diskimage files inserted..
2. v86 windows devicemanager did show problems with the emulated SONY CD ROM stating another device is already detected and after removing it and rebooting the error is gone but devicemanager shows 2 CDROM entries..
3. v86 save state does not work and shows an error in Firefox console.. which is very annoying as the virtual machine loses the precious Win2K3 installation when turned off..

SAVE_STATE_BUG_PICTURE:

Win2K3 seems a suitable worthy and versatile candidate for v86 imho :-)

Any advice to make it work?

Keep up the good work!

with kind regards.. Peter

[SuperMaxusa]

v86 save state does not work and shows an error in Firefox console.. which is very annoying as the virtual machine loses the precious Win2K3 installation when turned off..

Maybe your PC doesn't have enough RAM to save it?

Once I tried to fully install Windows XP SP3 in v86, but I used a lightweight custom version (you can do it using nLite yourself) that fits on a 512 MB of disk space.

v86 windows devicemanager did show problems with the emulated SONY CD ROM stating another device is already detected and after removing it and rebooting the error is gone but devicemanager shows 2 CDROM entries..

Most likely it depends on OS version, because on SP3 I have only one CD-ROM device and it works properly.

Could you try installing your Server 2003 using QEMU then test it on v86?

[chschnell]

I just ran a test using this setup image with these settings:

• BIOS: SeaBIOS 1.16.2 (Release)
• RAM: 2048M
• VGA RAM: 256M
• boot order: automatic
• hda: 2046M (blank)
• net: ne2k
• w2k3: format using FAT file system

I didn't need any floppy disks (boots and installs off the CD) and it eventually boots from hda without any notable issues:

[chschnell]

@PTz0uAH: Ok, I found some time today and was able to take a more detailed look at w2k3.

1. v86 detects at boot an inserted floppy.img (which needed to be removed to boot into windows) yet windows does not recognise the 1440K nor the 720K diskimage files inserted..

Can confirm, I suspect this is a duplicate of Windows 2000 floppy disk support #1063. The floppy device doesn't work at all here under w2k3.

2. v86 windows devicemanager did show problems with the emulated SONY CD ROM stating another device is already detected and after removing it and rebooting the error is gone but devicemanager shows 2 CDROM entries..

Well, the CD-ROM device is indeed glitched, but not broken. I installed w2k3 from CD to a blank HDA using only v86 (no qemu), so the CD-ROM device essentially works. When I mess around with the Windows system config I can also see two CD-ROM devices, but that's only temporary, a reboot brings it back to the previous state (where it complains about a duplicate device but shows only a single one).

The actual w2k3 error message about the CD-ROM device is:

Device Status: Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because there is a duplicate device already running in the system (Code 42)

Unfortunately Windows doesn't want to tell me what the actual conflict is here. Online info about Code 42 also doesn't really help much, unsurprisingly. The sytem event log also doesn't show anything. My best guess is that we might have another PCI device space issue here.

I ran w2k3 under v86 debug mode to see if there's anything suspicious around the IDE devices, but this looks also ok.

So, since the CD-ROM essentially works I'll not spend more time on it for now. The floppy issue is more important, because it's now been reported for Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

---

You didn't mention it (you probably found that out yourself), but if you want to enable network support see Enabling networking (ne2k) in the v86 Windows NT documentation.

I couldn't figure out how to install the SoundBlaster though. EDIT: see here for SoundBlaster support

[SuperMaxusa]

I couldn't figure out how to install the SoundBlaster though.

See https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37969 and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/virtual_pc_guy/how-to-get-sound-working-under-windows-server-2003-in-virtual-pc.
You can extract the files from installed Windows XP or from any installation CD, then install them using Add Hardware Wizard.

[chschnell]

I couldn't figure out how to install the SoundBlaster though.

See https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37969 and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/virtual_pc_guy/how-to-get-sound-working-under-windows-server-2003-in-virtual-pc. You can extract the files from installed Windows XP or from any installation CD, then install them using Add Hardware Wizard.

This worked perfectly, thanks!

I've made a small CD-ROM image with the driver files to make this a little easier: xp3sb16.zip [53 KB].

[PTz0uAH]

@SuperMaxusa & @chschnell thanks for your answers..

After migrating from Win7 M4400 4gb mem to another Win10 PC with 16gb to rule out lack of RAM..

I already used NLite to create a Win2k3sp2 ISO including all POST-RC2 updates I could find a decade ago.. but after your tips I went for a minimal approach..

So this is what I thought would work and have still to add audio in the final NLite run:

1. use NLite to create a minimal Win2k3sp2 installation ISO..
2. add SB16 drivers (todo)
3. add Win2000 realtek LAN drivers

So with a preliminary test (NLited 296mb ISO) I "unattended" installed the Win2k3 ISO in v86 HDD and that gave a nice HDD (2046MB) installation of about 1.2 GB..

During further testing I could export/save the HDD though SAVE_STATE still did gave an error so maybe it is the limitation of 32 bits WASM (2GB or 4GB memspace?) but that is just a hunch.. or maybe it is some Firefox specific limitation..

The largest disk I could use with SAVE_STATE was about 1.0 GB.. so there are some limitations.. I guess..

I could not use the Floppy which I still need to migrate some really old projects I created back in the day.. but as a workaround I ressurected my old Win2k3 dev environment hdd (disk2vhd) with VirtualBox so building old stuff could be possible again and the floppy images worked fine..

Devicemanager still has an unknown "PCI Device" which seems to be a Virtio-9p device (local networking?) and I could not get any drivers for guest Win2K3.. or even windows host so I disabled the device..

I just have to figure out how to connect to a tcp-server and local network.. read the docs.. and maybe even try connect to v86-Win2k3 via rdp.. that should be a blast.. but probably difficult.. if not impossible..

When I have it running the way I like it I shall post some screenshots..

[PTz0uAH]

@chschnell glad to read about the progress you've made!

Btw.. Win2K3 runs like a charm.. besides the floppy drive.. all installed right inside v86..

I am now trying to resurrect the ISO goodies I found on my old dev backup..

Just hoping the 2nd floppy drive you are implementing is not interfering with the B: also used in the XP+ PE (Pre-install Environment).. (perhaps auto-opt-in the 2nd floppy when running old windows.. on behalf of "modern windowzes" so we can test a plethora of PE creations depending on B: ramdisk.. ?)

That hobby OS I dug up depends on B: but maybe windows is clever enough to differentiate.. :-)

btw.. the 2 cdrom drives being visible means probably the v86 ide-controller erroneously shows both a real-mode (dos) variant and also the protected-mode one we like to use from windows.. but I'll write some more findings at the Win98 issue.. #1359

[chschnell]

@chschnell glad to read about the progress you've made!

Btw.. Win2K3 runs like a charm.. besides the floppy drive.. all installed right inside v86..

Same for me, it's very stable, I also fully installed with nothing but v86. The floppy fully works now for me.

Just hoping the 2nd floppy drive you are implementing is not interfering with the B: also used in the XP+ PE (Pre-install Environment).. (perhaps auto-opt-in the 2nd floppy when running old windows.. on behalf of "modern windowzes" so we can test a plethora of PE creations depending on B: ramdisk.. ?)

I've made provisions for fdb to be disabled, but it is enabled by default now. Some guest OSes (FreeDOS and Debian, for example) detect the 2nd drive silently while booting, Win 2k3 performs its little ritual with the little pop-up windows in the status bar (one needs to reboot and then re-export the hda image to stop that).

I hope that all OSes just pick up the 2nd floppy drive and enumerate their drives accordingly while booting, v86 state snapshot images might need to be re-created, I guess.

btw.. the 2 cdrom drives being visible means probably the v86 ide-controller erroneously shows both a real-mode (dos) variant and also the protected-mode one we like to use from windows.. but I'll write some more findings at the Win98 issue.. #1359

That's a good idea, on a quick first guess it might be misconfigured right here, I'll have to look this field up again (maybe there's a better option).