NT 4.0 BSOD

[publius]

I was playing around trying to run Windows NT 4.0 Workstation under VirtualBox, running the latest version, 4.1.18, and I'm getting a STOP 0x0A, IRQ not less than or equal, when I boot the VM from the NT 4.0 setup CD.

The problem seems to be with the IOAPIC. I was trying to use 2 CPUs. In playing around, it will boot and set up successfully with only one CPU and the IOAPIC turned off. Turn IOAPIC on, however, with even just one virtual CPU, and it will BSOD.

The host CPU is an AMD Phenom II quad core running on an ASUS mobo.

Any ideas on what I might try would be appreciated.

[BillG]

NT 4.0 is a pre-2000 operating system. I would not expect it to know much about I/O APIC or multi-processor support.

[michaln]

NT 4.0 is a pre-2000 operating system. I would not expect it to know much about I/O APIC or multi-processor support.

You'd expect wrong... NT 4 did support the Intel MPS standard. And NT supported multiprocessing ever since the initial release, although back then it was only on custom hardware (as there simply was no standard yet).

Anyway, I can run NT 4 with 2 VCPUs in VirtualBox, but this is on an Intel system. The things to check for is that the guest type must be set to NT4, and NT must be at least SP1, preferably SP6.

Also, if the guest OS doesn't run on the host, it may not run in the guest. With hardware virtualization, enough of the host's behavior (including performance) is exposed to the guest that we've seen several cases where a guest doesn't boot in VirtualBox, only to turn out that it doesn't boot directly on the host either (this was at least with Windows 2000 and some versions of OS X and Solaris).

[publius]

Yeah, I ran NT 4.0 Workstation with 2 CPUs way back when it first came out. My first dual-CPU mo/bo was a Tyan Tomcat III (I think) running dual Pentiums. Then I went to an ABIT VP-6 with two Pentium IIIs. I think I've still got both mo/bos still in a closet somewhere. NT has supported multiprocessing from the get-go.

I haven't tried booting the NT 4 CD directly on this machine (too scared, I doubt it would handle the AHCI SATA and might screw something up), but it will run with 2 CPUs under VMWare Player (4.0.4 version, I think). CPU usage is high though -- even with the virtual CPUs idling in the guest, the host CPU will hold at around 40% usage according to Task Manager (looks like two cores are going wide open running the two virtual CPUs). I've seen that with Windows 2000 under both VirtualBox and VMWare, but it seems to vary.

I don't think there's any official way to slipstream NT 4 service packs into the setup CD, but if there is any way to see if a higher service pack will run here under VirtualBox, I'd like to try it.