I'm having a problem getting Windows XP installed under Xen. I'm using Fedora 8 and have installed all of the updates as of March 1st, 2008.
First I create a device for the disk image using LVM. The logical volume path is /dev/cheetah/1
Now I zero out the disk to avoid any leftovers.
dd bs=65536 if=/dev/zero of=/dev/cheetah/1
Now I fire up the gui Virtual Machine Manager. After connecting to the localhost I click "new" and start the VM creation process.
For the system name I type "WinXP"
On the next screen I choose "Fully Virtualized" and click forward.
I select the ISO location for the Windows XP disc. Then selected the type of guest OS Type as "Windows" and the OS Variant as "Microsoft Windows XP".
On the next screen I select "Normal Disc Partition" and browse to /dev/cheetah/1
Next, I choose Virtual Network.
Now I get to allocate memory and CPU. I assign 2 gigs of ram in both the VM Max and VM Startup. Then I choose 2 VCPUs. The system has two physical cpus.
Now Xen tells me that it's ready to begin installation. I click finish and it starts up the vm.
It boots from the iso image into the Windows XP installation process as normal.
I go through the install process and it partitions and formats the disk. Then it installs all the files and gets ready to reboot to finish the installation.
As soon as it tries to boot off the newly installed disk I get an error.
"Booting from Hard Disk...
A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"
At this point nothing works. It's maxed out on the CPU usage and the VM is impossible to shutdown even from the command line with a "xm destroy WinXP". The only way to kill it is to do a system restart.
I've tried Windows Vista and Windows XP 64-bit and they both do the same thing.
Start Free Trial
