Legacy OS VMs - including PS script for VM generation

I've undertaken a new project to get some VMs made, starting with Windows 2000 on up through all the Windows versions. Only, I can't find my original MSDN Windows 2000 disc 1 (I have disc 2, but it is odds and ends including the Multi Language disc installer lol.

So, I've written a script in PS to set up VMs the way I want, including folder location, virtualized hardware setup, and more. It works well, though it is all text entry, but it sets up everything in one go, no need to go back and adjust things after initial setup. In the last couple of weeks, I managed to get

• XP Professional x86
• Vista X64 Ultimate
• 7 Ultimate
• 8.1 X64

all installed in VMs. XP is slow as molasses. Vista and 7 are working fine, and all 3 are easily accessible via RDP.

8.1, though, constantly gives me credentials are incorrect when trying to log in via RDP. The exact same password works through the Hyper-V VM connect app. I've tried a dozen 'fixes' from too many other websites offering help with the inability to log in via RDP into a 8.1 VM, including doing this:


Will not accept incoming RDP.

Other things I've tried:

• Explicitly assigning permission to log in for user via secpol
• Explicitly allowed NTLM, remote access, and more via grpol
• made RDP (term services) service enabled and automatically starting (was manual)
• deleted Windows credentials for the guest from host and everything in guest per OAT's post linked above tried after that, as well as manually created generic creds, too.
• verified external switch was working by logging in to other 3 VMs flawlessly via RDP (actually using Royal TS v7, using RDP, as well as the native RDP app in Windows 11)
• Made sure Windows 11 was set to connect to guests even if NTLM was not available
• All other 3 VMs are Gen 1, 8.1 is gen 2, per Microsoft documentation
• wiped networking and started over, wiped entire VM and started over.

All 4 VMs are running full latest updates, not just from Microsoft, but also via Legacy Update v1.7. I'm quite literally at wits end with this 8.1 install.

So, to get my mind off this issue this evening, I decided to grab an official Microsoft Windows XP 64bit .ISO from archive.org and make a new XP VM.

Holy mackerel! This thing is easily 10x faster than the XP 32bit VM. I power on the VM, and I'm ready to log in in under 10 seconds flat. Fully loaded. This type 1 hypervisor is certainly more appreciated by XP x64 than it is by XP x86 lol.

Once I get caught up with rebuilding all the VMs up through 11 Canary, I'll start with the Server VMs. I haven't decided if it s even worth throwing 2k3 and 2k8 on here, but I definitely will through 2012 R2 as that officially hits EoL this October.

If you're planning on using any VMs of anything older than 10, I highly recommend that you take a look at Legacy Update. It just works.

One other thing I learned about legacy OSs - Internet Explorer won't work for a lot of sites, but yanno what it can load? Google.

Know what else? http://ftp.mozilla.org - from where you can navigate to download a Firefox build that works on your OS (52.9ESR for XP / Vista and 115.1.0ESR for 7 / 8 / 8.1).

There are other browsers out there as well that can be installed, and XP's IE was able to navigate to both an Opera download link (for the last version supporting XP) as well as SeaMonkey. But Fx is my browser of choice.

I go back to server 2016 from time to time, but that's about as far back as useful goes for me.

Hi there

@johnlgalt

XP (both 64 bit and 32 bit) run like greased lignimg on a Linux host with KVM/QEMU. I still use XP regularly as I have some legacy hardware hardware and studio software for cutting vinyl Discs so I can make bespoke vinyls for people from CD's / music file etc etc. This stuff only runs on XP and new hardware would cost around €25,000 so not worth it since the old stuff functions perfectly.

BTW if you want to share files from other computers with XP, SMB1 needs to be enabled (If using SAMBA on a LAN set the protocol to NT1, and enable NLTM in the smb.conf configuration file). Also ensure that the appropriate "tools" package is installed on the guest --this will ensure best quality video, audio, network, mouse, keyboard etc. E.G for virtual box it's "guest additions" or similar, for vmware wks/player its vmware tools, for linux hosts for windows guests its the virtio iso - run the setup.exe on the guest.

HYPER-V doesn't really play so well with old Windows Guests - and USB re-direction is very flaky for XP -- rememeber also USB2 is the only available protocol for XP -- so using USB for file transfer will be slow and disk I/O will be emulated IDE devices. However there's an "unofficial SP4" for XP that some hobbyists brought with updates etc.

Note only for the 32 bit version though.


- and you really do need the "guest tools" for video --especially if you have large monitors -- even 1920 X 1080 was rare in XP days -- for 4K UHD size monitors --forget it --- but the "Virtual hardware" will handle it.

For XP SATA drivers -- both 64 and 32 bit versions =-- still available from INTEL site -- this improves Disk I/O performance no end as it's far better than the standard IDE drivers.


For other mobos -- Universal RAID and SATA XP drivers (both x64 and x86)



cheers
jimbo

johnlgalt said:

XP is slow as molasses. Vista and 7 are working fine, and all 3 are easily accessible via RDP.

Click to expand...

That XP issue might be RDP related. I always ran XP VM in Hyper-V through the main ui console and there are no slowdowns encountered.
To improve VM usability, make sure you manually install the drivers / integration components in the VM if possible.
There were some older MS ISOs that provided the Hyper-V guest extras for older Hyper-V releases which included XP drivers. But that dates to while back.
More to read about XP VM here:

By the way, if you try the Win 2000 install, I can confirm the SP4 integrated ISO installs and runs under Hyper-V.

Win 8.1 runs well through Enhanced Mode. That's a bit odd it has issues through RDP. Thanks for mentioning this, I never tried RDP in Win 8.1 VM so far, hopefully you'll find the solution.

jimbo45 said:

BTW if you want to share files from other computers with XP, SMB1 needs to be enabled (If using SAMBA on a LAN set the protocol to NT1, and enable NLTM in the smb.conf configuration file). Also ensure that the appropriate "tools" package is installed on the guest --this will ensure best quality video, audio, network, mouse, keyboard etc. E.G for virtual box it's "guest additions" or similar, for vmware wks/player its vmware tools, for linux hosts for windows guests its the virtio iso - run the setup.exe on the guest.

Click to expand...

Maybe for Linux but not for Windows. With RDP I have direct access to all my host machine's drives without it.

jimbo45 said:

HYPER-V doesn't really play so well with old Windows Guests - and USB re-direction is very flaky for XP -- rememeber also USB2 is the only available protocol for XP -- so using USB for file transfer will be slow and disk I/O will be emulated IDE devices. However there's an "unofficial SP4" for XP that some hobbyists brought with updates etc.

Click to expand...

It's playing perfectly fine here. You have to install the updates, then the Legacy Update solution to get further updates, which for XP includes an update to the Terminal Services. Finally, you need to install the VMGuest additions that make XP work in a VM seamlessly (I can move into and out of the RDP window without any key combinations, access all local drives, have gigabit Ethernet NIC, contemporary resolution and more.

As for X64, there is an unofficial SP3 too. But Legacy Update takes ot to much more modern and current updates, beyond SP4 (x86) and SP3 (x64). It's the better option for all pre-Win 10 OSs out there.

Hopachi said:

That XP issue might be RDP related. I always ran XP VM in Hyper-V through the main ui console and there are no slowdowns encountered.
To improve VM usability, make sure you manually install the drivers / integration components in the VM if possible.
There were some older MS ISOs that provided the Hyper-V guest extras for older Hyper-V releases which included XP drivers. But that dates to while back.
More to read about XP VM here:

Click to expand...

Actually, I think I have that answer. I think when I first installed XP 32 bit, the HAL didn't pick up on multiple processors (because I used the same link you linked to, and probably only used a single core), whereas the XP 64 bit install did. So I bet the XP 32 bit install was running on a single core, and this 64 bit install sees all 4 cores.

Your link's steps ware what I followed the first time, and the HAL was stuck, which I only found out about last night. I'm gonna build a new x86 XP VM for Ss & Gs doing it the proper way so that it has what it needs from start, and the HAL isn't stuck using only a single core.

Hopachi said:

By the way, if you try the Win 2000 install, I can confirm the SP4 integrated ISO installs and runs under Hyper-V.

Win 8.1 runs well through Enhanced Mode. That's a bit odd it has issues through RDP. Thanks for mentioning this, I never tried RDP in Win 8.1 VM so far, hopefully you'll find the solution.

Click to expand...

Ahh, yes, archive.org should have that - I'll need a TechNet / MSDN variety, as my keys are from my old TechNet subscription.

As for Win 8.1 - it refuses to connect regardless if I have Enhanced Session enabled or disabled. I've nuked it and will start over, and see if I can figure it out - the advice for 8.1 not working via RDP is all over the place, but nothing I've researched has led to a fix as of yet - and I spent several hours (collectively) over the last few nights trying.

It's not the HAL. And neither is it much of anything else.

I was dedicating 8 GB of RAM to both VMs, but I realized that XP x86 wasn't seeing all of it. It see 3.87 GB and has PAE enabled.

XP x64 saw all 8 GB. So, I dropped both down to 4 GB, thinking PAE might be the issue.

Well, it's still there, and x86 is slower than x64, but notice the difference in the performance tab on both:






I've created the user account and added a password to it so that is the account that is logging in on the x64 install, and the x86 install is auto logging (no pw) on its user account as well.

Since I'm still having to use PAE, I'm gonna test both with 3 GB RAM and see what happens. It's either PAE, or it's the architecture. The x64 install has both higher commit charge and kernel Memory in use, and yet is still noticeable faster at all things when I run them side by side.

CPU is a 16 C / 32 T CPU, and I've given both installs only 4. I have 128 GB RAM total, and both VMs are in the exact same location, on my third NVMe drive, in side by side folders.

BTW, the installation of both OSs is also a bit different from each other. The XP x64 SP1 install behaves exactly as I remember XP always behaving - during install, it asks for regional settings, PC name, and admin password, and then after install is complete it has the administrator account waiting to log in.

The XP x86 install goes a little different, it does the above, but then when the install is complete, it does the whole "Welcome to Windows" bullshit and then asks a few questions, including the name of a User, which it then logs you in as - with no password.

I'm really not sure why, but something is screwing with XP x86 on Hyper-V. Gonna use Legacy Update 1/7 on both (already at max respective official SPs) and see if I can't determine what is going on. If it is the same after all 153 updates waiting for it from Legacy Update then tomorrow I'll drop to 3 GB RAM and see what happens.

BTW, I'm not saying that XP x86 is lagging, or slow - I'm saying XP x64 is simply twice as fast (at times almost 10x faster). It runs as fast as I feel XP would run on a bare metal install on my physical hardware.

These are both new installs, so until the Terminal Services update gets pushed, I don't access them via RDP, only VMConnect, so it ain't even RDP at fault here.

Interesting results @johnlgalt

My bad, as I didn't expected XP x86 to run multicore. There is an issue to expect there but I don't remember what.
I've always left XP VMs with one single core to be safe. From my tests a while back I also noticed with PAE on x86 to still have a limit under 4GB memory, not much I could do.

XP x64 is indeed faster in Hyper-V's case as it is based on Server 2003 and that one is optimized to run as a VM, blazing fast from what I've seen, the x86 isn't.

Yeah, I'm not really sure. But no worries, I did a lot of research, and figured out that XP has built in 2 different HALs, one for single core processors and one for multi-core. If you install with a single or 2 processors, it reverts to using the single core HAL, (1 core, 2 processes via HT is what it thinks it is seeing). But you can change it, I have a link somewhere saved from all my research for a Microsoft tool that allows you to adjust which one is being used - and then you can throw more cores at it.

Install it with 3 or more cores, though, and it uses the other HAL from the start. Or, it is supposed to. I'm going to verify that in the coming days.

I agree that x64 *should* be faster, but not like this. It's speed is what I would expect running an ancient OS on modern hardware. XP x86 feels more like I'm running it on mechanical HDDs and fist generation Core i processors lol.

For these older OSs I find 4 vcores of my CPU are more than enough to fully push them as I need. And it allows me to run more simultaneously.

Huh. At least XP x86 installed and is running. Vista x86 seems to not even want to install lol!

(Doing side by side installs of Vista x64 and Vista x86 - 64bit moving right along, 32-bit, not so much.)

Ugh. This one is weird as hell.

XP x86 installed fine, runs a bit slower than XP x64, but installs and works, and I can RDP into it.

Vista x64 installs fine as well. Vista x86, however, won't even install.



If you ever installed Vista, you'll know that after installing all the components, it wants to reboot into the new system, and it gives you 10 seconds (with a progress bar) before it automatically reboot.

On this x86 install, each second counted down at the space of a minute. Yes, it took 10 minutes to count down 10 seconds, then the above popped up.

Both install media are from MSDN discs I have - no errors detected when making .ISOs from either one. But, I suspect something just ain't right with this disc.

Guess I gotta search archive.org for some MSDN Vista x86 .ISOs - preferably one with SP2 already integrated.

Sigh.

johnlgalt said:

Ugh. This one is weird as hell.

XP x86 installed fine, runs a bit slower than XP x64, but installs and works, and I can RDP into it.

Vista x64 installs fine as well. Vista x86, however, won't even install.

View attachment 68883

If you ever installed Vista, you'll know that after installing all the components, it wants to reboot into the new system, and it gives you 10 seconds (with a progress bar) before it automatically reboot.

On this x86 install, each second counted down at the space of a minute. Yes, it took 10 minutes to count down 10 seconds, then the above popped up.

Both install media are from MSDN discs I have - no errors detected when making .ISOs from either one. But, I suspect something just ain't right with this disc.

Guess I gotta search archive.org for some MSDN Vista x86 .ISOs - preferably one with SP2 already integrated.

Sigh.

Click to expand...

@johnlgalt

This one any good for you : MSDN XP-2003 Disc 2430 Oct 2003 : Microsoft : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

BTW old technet keys for W7/W8/W8.1 still work on activating W10 and W11 so you can have loads of VMs / concurrent different windows 11 builds.


cheers
jimbo

Why are you linking me to an XP disc? the image is of Vista. the RDP issue was with Windows 8.1. Not really sure why you think I need an XP disc.

As far as TechNet keys: Yes, I've been saying that since the first time I installed Windows 11, as well as how I've been testing all the Insiders builds in VMs. too.

I grabbed the TechNet official Vista .ISOs with SP2 already slip streamed for both architectures. Both are currently installing, and are running neck in neck in terms of speed. This is much, much better.

https://archive.org/details/en_windows_vista_sp2_x86_dvd_342266 and https://archive.org/details/en_windows_vista_sp2_x64_dvd_342267_202010