Needing a moment of headspace I decided to spin up the latest Windows 8 Release Candidate on my KVM platform at home…
I pulled the image from: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/release-preview
Lets kick off the install:
I selected Windows 7 as Windows 8 is not yet an option.
I selected kvm and an x64 platform (the RC is a 32-bit) but it shouldn’t matter.
The first attempt failed rather miserably with a typical Microsoft style error of ‘limited’ usefulness:
Not exactly useful – but the error is actually trying to tell me I am using an unsupported CPU. Ok, so lets take a quick look at how the CPU is configured on KVM by default:
Notice how every single CPU feature is turned off by default …. Well, Windows 8 supposedly needs at least the following:
- mmx
- sse
- nx
- pae
So, quick fix – either set these manually or “Copy from Host”:
This applies the required bits.
Shut down the KVM and start it again:
So, short and sweet — setting CPU defaults on a KVM is a bloody useful thing to do!
3 comments
Thanks !
I was starting to think the only way to virtualize Windows8 on Linux was VirtualBox or VMware…
And that was so simple.
Thanks for the tip.
I wanted to add that it is also required by the SCCM 2012 WinPE.
Hi, thanks for your tip.
I am Debian, x86. The only option I have is kvm with i686. I configued the cpu as you said. After logo screen dispalyed, no more error showed up, however there was only black screen. How can I fix this? Does x86 and x86_64 matter?
Thanks