Windows XP Mode on QEmu on Linux - qemu

In this tutorial you can see how to extract the VHD image file of the Windows XP contained in the "Windows XP Mode".
The tutorial also explains how to run it on VirtualBox and it works nicely (no special parameter, you just add the disk).
But I want to run it on QEmu and there I get a blue screen.
This is the command I'm using:
qemu-system-i386 -m 1G --enable-kvm -drive file=VirtualXP.vhd
I tried to convert the image to qcow2, raw, ... same issue.
I tried x86_64... same issue.
I tried without --enable-kvm... same issue but the blue screen is covered partly by a black rectangle.
After the blue screen it restarts and allows me to choose safe mode. But all options give this identical blue screen.
When I boot the image with VirtualBox I noticed that the VM has already a driver installed to allow the use of the host's mouse cursor. I suspect that this image has VM guest drivers installed that are not compatible with QEmu and maybe make it crashes.
Important note: I don't have a Windows XP CD-ROM to help me.
Here is a screen shot of the blue screen (I suppose it will be the exact same error on all machines):

This might have to do with the drivers windows expects, there are various results using search engines to fix/repair this issue I found but they mostly boil down to:
Install standard IDE drivers
Registery edit to add these IDE drivers
If BSOD 0xCE
Remove Intelppm driver
Edit registery to reflect the removal of this CPU driver
I like the idea of a Windows XP image converted to another, for qemu. And it sounded awesome if this was a legal way. And I now know how they solved this. There is a 30 days trail period and after this, our downloaded image will nolonger boot. (unless you redo all your steps on a fresh copy that never has been started).
Sources to help you (and I ) anyway: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/troubleshoot-inaccessible-boot-device
wich was to me very cryptic and what to do?
But it was also reverenced by the following more helpfull article, and i was almost capable of making a bootable harddisk image for qemu because of this: http://0x0badc0de.blogspot.com/2013/05/converting-windows-virtual-machine-from.html
But after some hours back and forth, I wasnt fully successful and even the author mentions the 30day trial. legal, maybe, but still troublesome.
There is however a key included and if you where to acquire a XP install disk, maybe able to obtain a successful install of windows XP with the same 30 days trial. Hope this answer helps you or any traveler to decide their own story.

Related

How to remove soaleplus.exe from Chrome?

I have tried removing it from the extensions section in Chrome settings, but it reappears every time I reopen Chrome. My computer runs on Windows 7 Ultimate
As you haven't specified, I assume, you are using Windows OS. It is a potential malware. You have to uninstall the program explicitly from control panel and then restart chrome. It should work. If it doesn't work, then you might have to scan your system by some good anti-virus like kaspersky or avast.
You should download Microsoft Security Essentials (or another similar anti-virus program) I've used MSE in the past and it works well (without noticeably slowing down your system) there are no up-sells with it either (like you'll get w McAfee or Norton antivirus).
Just go to Google, search Microsoft Security Essentials. Then download and install the latest version (for Windows 7 32-bit)
It's free and should get rid of this program (looks like Malware to me).
Here's a link: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/security-essentials-all-versions

Windows (phone) emulator 8.1/10 stuck at loading the OS

I've been trying to get the emulator to work for days. Previously I tried the Windows Phone 8.1 Emulator as well as the Windows 8.1 Simulator and both were stuck at loading the OS.
Earlier today I installed the new Windows 10 Tools and thought I should give it another try with the new Windows 10 Emulator... And no, still the same result.
What's strange is that, the Hyper-V Manager seems to be doing OK. I can see the app displays correctly on the little Preview window (see the box on the left side of the picture below).
Also, breakpoints are hit, the project seems to be running OK.
As many answers have already suggested, I tried letting it running for an hour, but still nothing came up.
Things that I've also tried include uninstalling all the Virtual Machines as well as repairing the WP 8.1 Emulator, nothing has worked so far.
Please help, this has driven me completely insane. :(
Update
Not sure if this would help, but if I change the Windows Phone Emulator Internal Switch to use Private network instead of Internal, I will get a couple of warnings saying Unable to determine the Host IP address and then the Emulator will show up with the Emergency Call screen. Not much I can do from there as the three buttons on the bottom are not functioning at all.
I understand that changing the connection type is not the right way to do it, but this at least tells me that the Emulator can work, it's just a matter of how.
I believe you have two Windows Phone Internal Switch connections and one seems to be unplugged while the other is running. Disable the one that is unplugged and leave the latter. This worked for me after 2days of tinkering. God speed.
Try the following.
Open the Hyper-V Manager
In the Actions pane, click Hyper-V Settings
In the Server pane, select Physical GPUs
Uncheck, Use this GPU with RemoteFX
Click OK to save/close.
Attempt to start the Windows Phone emulator VM from within Hyper-V Manager or Visual Studio.
I solved this problem by simply adding XDE.EXE as an exception to my Windows Firewall.
Just today
Many times it is not stuck. It just does take too long to start. I have an 8 core processor and it took like 5 minutes to launch, I tought it was stuck but it did launch.
Not sure if this would help, but if I change the Windows Phone
Emulator Internal Switch to use Private network instead of Internal, I
will get a couple of warnings saying Unable to determine the Host IP
address and then the Emulator will show up with the Emergency Call
screen. Not much I can do from there as the three buttons on the
bottom are not functioning at all.
when you set it to private network, Windows can't interact with your WP Emulator. Open Network Adapter, and try disable and try start emulator again, then enable again this adapter if it is not work *
I contacted the Visual Studio Team a couple of weeks ago and looks like they have fixed this issue in the latest update. And here is how I finally got it all working.
Update your Windows 10 TP to the latest version (currently 10074).
Install the latest Visual Studio 2015 (currently RC).
Install Windows 10 developer tools preview from here (I got
some weird errors with Error code: -2147023294. Ignore them, go
straight to the next step).
Install the standalone Windows SDK for Windows 10 Insider
Preview from here.
Install the Pre-release Microsoft Emulator for Windows 10 Mobile
from here.
That's all! After all these are done, both my Simulator and Emulator are loading up fine.
In my case, deleting the internal switch from Hyper-V virtual switch manager helps, whenever you run your app using emulator as the target, it'll add a new internal switch by itself and the emulator will run normally (no longer stuck on loading screen)
The problem is, I have to do it every single time I restart my PC
The workaround steps to install the Windows SDK and Emulator are no longer needed.
We have released a fix as of 7PM PDT 30 April 2015 for the setup error
Windows 10 SDK 10.0.10069 : The installer failed.
User cancelled installation. Error code: -2147023294"
New setups should no longer encounter this issue.
For existing installations, and for more information, see this forum post:
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/17bc9d5e-2ea7-4149-bb75-23997db8bd25/
This worked for me:
Go to Windows Defender.
Add exclusion following path: "C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XDE\YourEmulatorVersion"
YourEmulatorVersion - for example 10.0.14393.9
2 days, tried all that is posted here but nothing worked! Finally, since it is a lot easier nowadays to (re)install windows without loosing your files (3 hours including updates), I just resorted to that. Same thing happened, but then I saw the alert that I had not yet activated my VS to run in developer mode :) Did that, and voila, the emulator now works.
If this might be helpful: my problem started when I installed Android Studio and disabled Hyper-V from Android. Enabling it back for VS just couldn't get me to run it again. But I hear there is a way to run both Android & VS emulators using VS emulator for Android. I will try to see how that works later...
I know the question is old, but none of the above answers worked for me so I write down my two cents:
Go to Hyper-V console and remove all emulators
Go to Devices Management, under network adapters tree node, delete all virtual switches
Run an emulator from Visual Studio and see the magic happen

Fedora 21 terminal based application slow response

I have recently updated to Fedora 21 Beta, and updated all packages. As the final release is scheduled early next month, I don't expect anything big to change. So I think the problem I am facing may well persist into the production release.
The problem is that when using some terminal based applications, the terminal responses very slowly. For example, say I edit a file with Vim in terminal, after a few minutes, it becomes increasingly difficult to use. Every time I hit a keystroke, the cursor will wait like a second to respond. Edit the same file (which is of only a dozen of lines) in GVim, everything works as smoothly as expected. Other terminal based applications shows the same slow response. However, using the terminal itself as an interactive shell has no problem at all.
I understand it is very hard to come by an answer to why it is experiencing this kind of slow response based only on my vague description. However, if anyone can point to where I should look for diagnostics of the problem, some log files etc., it will highly appreciated.
Below are some more details of the system.
The computer is a Dell T3500 workstation with Xeon W3550 CPU, NVIDIA Quadro 2000 GPU. I am using the latest NVIDIA binary driver (both the long live version 340.58 as well as the beta series 346.16 are tried). The open-source driver was uninstalled and its kernel module were blacklisted (lsmod | grep nouveau shows nothing, as expected). The desktop environment is GNOME Classic.
I believe the issue is with the Nvidia driver configuration. I know this question is old, but I was looking for a solution to the same problem in Fedora 22. I experienced this issue when I was using Fedora 21, but I mostly put up with it.
The solution for me was to uncheck Sync to VBlank in the Nvidia X Server settings.
Are you running in a VM whose storage grows as you need it? Perhaps the problem is that the VM is taking time to allocate space as your storage needs grow. If that's the case, after a while you won't have the problem anymore, as your virtual disk will have grown as big as it needs to be.
As for diagnostics, try running "top", look for paging activity and resident set size.
Maybe something has a memory leak. It might not be in the terminal, but in one of its dependencies.

Is is possible to have a workable USB bootable development environment for Monodevelop

Is is possible to have a bootable development environment for Monodevelop, just from a bootable USB. I am planning to test developing in MonoDevelop from a USB bootable version of Linuxmint 14.1 (Cinnamon). I don't want to invest in a virtual machine yet on my Dev pc.
If you have a pretty decent configuration on your laptop or PC and your BIOS supports booting from a USB Pen drive, then yes, you can burn an ISO to your USB Pen drive and start working with it. You can open with all applications seamlessly. For example, you can browse the web with Firefox, pass commands such as "apt-get ..." in the terminal, etc. I recently did the same thing by burning a Linux Mint 14.1 ISO on my 16GB Pen Drive. My machine had the below configuration:
(~4GB-RAM + 2.6GHZ-DUAL-CORE-CPU + ~300GB-HDD)
To format the pen-drive, you can issue this command from a linux terminal:
dd if=/home/PATH_TO_ISO/LinuxMint.iso of=/dev/sda bs=1M
Replace the path next to "if=" with the path to your ISO image, and the one next to "of=" with the device path of your USB pendrive.
My advice is not to make the LiveOS persistent. USB Pendrive is good enough to boot a system and start it, but if the OS starts saving data on it, you will be hit by performance degrade. After all, USB2 has some speed limitations. Rather, I advice you to save your work (your monodevelop solutions, projects, etc.) on an existing NTFS/EXT4 partition on your machine itself. This way you will enjoy a good performance, while also being able to boot from your Pen drive.
Cheers.

Visual studio + MySQL on Mac: Virtual Box vs Parallels

I am forced to finish my Windows project on Mac - Its a Visual Studio C# connected to MySQL database. I've installed it quite nicely on Virtual box and all looks fine (well... except the look of the VB itself, I can't change the screen resolution for some reasons so I use only about 50% of screen).
When I told this to my friend, who is quite passionate about Macs he suggested me Parallels, and even offered his copy. While it looks nicer and in theory is "better" I am not really able to work properly on connection between VS and MySQL: when I'm trying to get through wizard to add data sources I either get error that system cannot connect to ODBC (yes, I've reinstalled connectors) or wizard proceeds, but disappears after pressing any button (i.e. while I'm trying to type "localhost").
have anyone had such problems with Parallels? Or should I try to work on Virtual Box and fix the screen problem (any hints on that would be appreciated).
I have been using Parallels with Visual Studio / SQL Server for over 4 years by now, and it works like a charm! If for whatever reason your virtual machine might get slow, I can recommend you to get some extra memory for your beloved Apple.
Especially when running Windows, Parallels has some fancy integration tools, which gives it some pro's in comparison to VirtualBox.
My current Mac has 8GB of internal memory with an SSD drive. I have assigned 4GB for my virtual machine. I don't notice any slow-downs on OSX, nor on the virtual machine. In fact, my Windows boots faster than one of my native Windows machines!