10.8. Windows XP

Contributed by Benjamin David Lunt

Please read the message regarding software licenses in Section 1.6 before you install Windows XP as a guest operating system in Bochs.

Windows XP has been reported to install from the CD-ROM, and run inside Bochs. Here are a few settings that seem to work well when running on a Windows10 host, running at 3.0Ghz.

romimage: file=D:/path/to/your/bios/BIOS-bochs-latest
cpu: model=broadwell_ult
cpu: count=1, ips=75000000, reset_on_triple_fault=1, ignore_bad_msrs=1
cpu: cpuid_limit_winnt=0
clock: sync=realtime, time0=local
memory: guest=512, host=512
vgaromimage: file=D:/path/to/your/bios/VGABIOS-lgpl-latest-cirrus
vga: extension=cirrus, update_freq=5
pci: enabled=1, chipset=i440fx, slot1=cirrus
A known issue is to set the IPS value to less than 10,000,000 (minus the commas). WinXP doesn't run well at an IPS setting less than 10Mips.

Also don't set it to more than 250,000,000. Anything faster and WinXP seems to stall within the CPU loop function. WinXP seems to work well with an IPS setting of 75,000,000 on a 3.0Ghz host.

The 64-bit version of WinXP needs Bochs compiled with ACPI support even though you only set to one CPU.

For some reason, writing to a USB disk in WinXP, where the write takes a little while, WinXP will think it is an error since it didn't complete fast enough, displaying the error. I don't know why.