Windows XP / 2003 have always been treacherously unstable when moving them between hardware, so much so that fresh installs are wired into my head as being the only option. I’m tired of having three different virtualization platforms, and I don’t want to rebuild these machines. ‘Virtual Server 2005 R2’ is the first to go.

To deal with getting 0x000000ce / 0xce BSOD’s with processr.sys, set both/either of these key/values to ‘4’ in the registry before migrating the machine, or on the first startup:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Processor\Start
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm\Start

To avoid getting a 0x0000007b / 0x7b BSOD on startup due to the mass storage controller changing, run the registry modifications in MS KB 314082. I save the text inside the “copy here” block to a .reg file and ran it before converting below, and it was enough.

Then use the free VMWare vCenter Converter to convert the Virtual PC image (it has to be off) to a vmware image. On the third step of the wizard, under options, I set the disk controller from automatic to ide. Copy the resulting vmdk file to your KVM host.

Use qemu-img or kvm-img to convert the disk image from vmdk to qcow2:

kvm-img convert -O qcow2 server-ide.vmdk server-ide.qcow2

You can then use KVM to run this disk image. I use libvirt, I simply copied another libvirt xml file, removed the MAC addresses from it, removed the uuid, updated the guest name, and point it to this disk, specifying ‘ide’ as the ‘bus’ in the disk’s target element.

It takes the keyboard and mouse a few moments to work on the console the first time, I assume the devices are being detected in the background. I had one ‘PCI device’ detected without a driver, I let it stay that way. I set the resolution up by hand. On an early run I had issues with the VGA driver, but I can no longer recreate this.

If you were using a static address, you may need to follow the directions in MS KB 269155 to delete the old network interface that is now hidden or you’ll get an error about the address being in use.

Definitely leave a comment about how this works for you. It’s like playing with fire.

Here’s a libvirt xml for kicks:

<domain type='kvm'>
  <name>server</name>
  <memory>786432</memory>
  <currentMemory>786432</currentMemory>
  <vcpu>1</vcpu>
  <os>
    <type arch='i686' machine='pc'>hvm</type>
    <boot dev='hd'/>
  </os>
  <features>
    <acpi/>
  </features>
  <clock offset='utc'/>
  <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff>
  <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot>
  <on_crash>destroy</on_crash>
  <devices>
    <emulator>/usr/bin/kvm</emulator>
    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
      <source file='/srv/kvm/server/server-ide.qcow2'/>
      <target dev='hda' bus='ide'/>
    </disk>
    <interface type='bridge'>
      <source bridge='br0'/>
    </interface>
    <input type='mouse' bus='ps2'/>
    <graphics type='vnc' port='-1' autoport='yes' listen='127.0.0.1'/>
  </devices>
</domain>

The Cisco 3524XL doesn’t support PaGP or LaCP, you simply configure etherchannel by adding ‘port group N’ to each interface. The port group takes the configuration of the first interface in the port group

! Cisco 3524XL
interface FastEthernet0/1
 description uplink to 6509
 port group 1
 switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
 switchport mode trunk
end

The 6509 supports more dynamic protocols, and will try to use them unless you specify ‘switchport nonegotiate’ on the portchannel interface, which is key. Otherwise everytime you turn on ‘channel-group 4 mode on’ the ports will go down on the 3524XL and the ports on the 6509 will go into the ‘err-disabled’ state until you ‘shut’ / ‘no shut’ them.

! Cisco 6509
interface GigabitEthernet7/7
 description sw03 - rack 3
 no ip address
 switchport
 switchport mode trunk
 switchport nonegotiate
 channel-group 4 mode on
end

interface Port-channel4
 description sw03 - rack 3
 no ip address
 switchport
 switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
 switchport mode trunk
 switchport nonegotiate
end

It took me a little while to narrow this down. Building a kvm guest with vmbuilder via libvirt I was getting the error “unknown OS type hvm”. When I compared the output of ‘virsh capabilities’ on a good host and the one that wasn’t working, the later was missing the kvm hvm entries. When I checked out the init script for kvm, I realized the the kernel module wasn’t loaded and a quick check of dmesg confirmed that virtualization was disabled in the bios.