How To Boot, Install and Run Windows 2000 on QEMU-KVM

Interestingly enough Windows 2000 works fine on QEMU 64-bit but you have to specify Pentium as your CPU otherwise it doesn't complete the install (it will not pass the detecting/setting up devices phase).

-vga cirrus is wise because it is supported by Windows 2000 and allows higher resolutions and 24-bit color.

-cpu Pentium emulates an old computer and is necessary for install to complete

-device rtl8139 is important as this oldschool Realtek 8139 NIC is supported by Windows 2000 (unless you don't need a NIC).

qemu-system-x86_64 -cpu pentium -bios /usr/share/seabios/bios.bin -enable-kvm -m 128 -cdrom ~/Downloads/"Windows2000 .iso" -drive file=Windows2000.qcow2 -netdev user,id=n0 -device rtl8139,netdev=n0 -vga cirrus

Also keep in mind Windows 2000 has long been unsupported and has a myriad of vulnerabilities.  You should only be running it for "the memories" or because you have a Legacy system or data to migrate/test etc..

Windows 2000 runs amazingly well on QEMU and it is a nice reminder of how unbloated Windows was back then, performing lightning fast with just 128MB of RAM and 5GB of HDD being more than enough space to install Windows.  I also like how it looks like Windows 95 but has the NT kernel and NTFS of course.

 


Tags:

install, qemu, kvminterestingly, specify, pentium, cpu, doesn, detecting, devices, vga, cirrus, supported, allows, resolutions, emulates, rtl, oldschool, realtek, nic, _, bios, usr, seabios, bin, enable, kvm, cdrom, downloads, quot, iso, qcow, netdev, user, unsupported, myriad, vulnerabilities, legacy, migrate, etc, amazingly, reminder, unbloated, performing, mb, ram, gb, hdd, nt, kernel, ntfs,

Latest Articles

  • How to combine .txt ACLs without breaking things
  • How to ping all of Googlebot's IPs script
  • 'virtio0' uses a qcow2 feature which is not supported by this qemu version: QCOW version 3
  • Linux bash script to get the IP of a list of hostnames
  • How To Use Camera Webcam in Docker for OBS Studio etc...
  • Computer Server Won't Post Boot Or Enter BIOS Setup After Installing RAID SAS or GPU Card etc..
  • How To Test PHP Scripts from CLI with GET variables/query string
  • apt-cache how to see all available versions of a package in Debian Ubuntu Mint
  • Virtualbox VBox Guest-utils drag and drop files stops working with Windows VMs
  • How To Remove Ubuntu Netplan and Go Back to /etc/network/interfaces
  • How To Force Flash an AMD Instinct GPU To Another Model Using Debian Ubuntu Mint Linux
  • How To compile ollama from source to use unsupported AMD GPU with rocm in Ubuntu Debian
  • QEMU KVM Virtio GPU Windows Cannot Select 1080P
  • Linux Gnome Desktop Ubuntu Mint Debian Gets Slower After Weeks
  • Firefox How to Save Full Page As Screenshot/PDF
  • Nvidia Datacenter Driver Tesla Slow nvidia-smi response and high utilization with 0 usage
  • ffmpeg how to normalize / increase the volume of your audio
  • kdenlive audio blips pops cracks artifacts solution fix
  • haproxy / nginx certbot SSL issues
  • nginx how to see the real IP when behind a CDN