Short answer: Probably not.
Long answer: Once installed, Windows has only the minimal drivers required to boot the hardware on your computer - which happens to be completely different from what QEMU emulates. Windows 9x has enough problems with this, but Windows NT is especially fickle. You may be able to boot Windows 95 or 98 work from QEMU this way (there have been a few reports of success), but if you want to try we can not help you. You are better off installing Windows into a disk image. Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional also has issues related to hardware activation.
If you really really want to try to set up Windows XP or Windows 2000 to be able to boot on both your real hardware and on QEMU, try looking at You receive a Stop 0x0000007B error after you move the Windows XP system disk to another computer and How to Move a Hard Disk with Windows 2000 Installed to Another Computer, which explains part of the problem in greater detail as well as some possible workarounds. This is for really advanced users only. If you don't understand what this article says, or if you follow its instructions but they don't work for you, do not come to us for help. We probably won't know any more about the problem than you. Note: If you try this with XP Home or XP Professional, you will be required to re-activate XP.
Graham (
kidsquid@grahams.idps.co.uk ): Actually, I have success in running all but XP (including NT and 2000). The trick is to run up the OS as normal (not in QEMU) then add a hardware profile (in system properties somewhere) maybe call it QEMU. Now shutdown and boot the host OS, then run up QEMU (in -snapshot to start just in case) pointing to the guest hdd (/dev/hda in this case). You get an extra screen during boot which allows you to select a hardware profile (the QEMU named one) and boot normally.
You can now boot either direct from powerup or inside QEMU selecting the correct profile.
The only trick I haven't tried is to install XP inside QEMU but onto the HDD then doing the trick the other way round.
adrian15 ( adrian15 THEROUNDTHING raulete DOT net ). I've tried to migrate a real w2k pro disk to a QEMU one. I've tried the "Add a Hardware profile" method, nothing. I've tried the "Remove all the devices except ide one" method, nothing. I haven't tried the Microsoft recommendations because they are
Windows XP specific. If anyone has any other workaround to make the moving of w2k disk possible please tell it.
