Windows 7 VM Fails to install in FreeNAS v 11

mike360x1

Contributor
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Dec 25, 2012
Messages
107
You need the VirtIO drivers. Instead of using the AHCI/Intel E1000 combination for disk and network, use the linked Virtual IO drivers. They are reportedly faster and, in my experience, functional.

Cheers,
Matt
I don't understand @MatthewSteinhoff , In your directions before this quoted post, you mentioned using the AHCI/Intel Combo. However, you're now suggesting using VirtIO. In this case, what are the names of the drivers if I use both VirtIO for both Network and Disk Drivers?
 

Jim Nevins

Dabbler
Joined
Jun 15, 2017
Messages
12
I still have had no luck configuring my Win7 VM. I tried a Win10 VM install and had success with it, using the aforementioned virtio driver for the NIC. I left the disc driver default. I'm still working on trying to get my Win7 VM install beyond the ". . .windows failed to install . . . incompatible with hardware . . . ." message. Sorry for the confusion.
 

philsynek

Cadet
Joined
Mar 21, 2017
Messages
4
I have the same issue... I tried Win 7 and 10. Attached the Disk and NIC as virtio and tried to load the viostor driver from virtio-win.iso attached as cdrom, but the vnc session gets closed while loading the driver. And if I look in my VMs tab after the session gets closed the state of thate VM is "STOPPED"... no clues why.
 

chris crude

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Oct 13, 2016
Messages
210
If i tried to make my NIC virtio BEFORE i had it setup in my Windows VM, i had similar errors. So instead of attaching the virtio.iso as a cdrom, i put the files in a shared drive and ran it from windows. After i seen the red hat drivers installed, i shut down Windows from inside the VM. I then went and changed the FreeNAS NIC to virtio, restarted the VM and have had no problems since then.
 

philsynek

Cadet
Joined
Mar 21, 2017
Messages
4
Ok, here is what I did:
  1. create zvol "workstation_w7"
  2. create VM
  3. leave NIC as is
  4. add device disk with "workstation_w7" as VirtIO
  5. add device cdrom with w7.iso
  6. add device with driver virtio.win.iso
  7. choose driver viostor amd64 from cdrom
  8. driver loads
  9. choose now visible drive
And the setup crashes while copying the installation files. When I delete the NIC and try it aigain the process already crashes while loading the driver (point 8)...
 

Kelxin

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Joined
Mar 23, 2017
Messages
2
When you create your zvol, click advanced mode and set your sector size to 512, then proceed with everything else.

Use the AHCI as your hard drive controller for the disk, then either e1000 or VirtIO as your NIC (I prefer virtio as for the performance gains on my 10GB/s nics and advanced features).

Update: My next thing I'm trying to figure out, is that I've gotten the Intel USB 3 drivers installed, but the mouse still wasn't functioning, so now trying to figure out where FreeNAS saves the config files for each VM so I can disable the XHCI, which will put the mouse into PS/2 mode.

Update 2: So far, the best approach that I've found is to enable RDP connections after install (using the keyboard), and remote desktop into the machine. Then the mouse and everything works, and you can just ignore VNC from there out.
 
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shawnmac74

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Feb 15, 2018
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3
Thank you, the 512 byte sector size did the trick for me! One thing that threw me off slightly was that you set the block size when creating the zvol and the sector size when adding the disk device to the VM.
 
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kasak

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Joined
Feb 15, 2014
Messages
33
I'm not sure if this thread is still active, but I went through various recommendations above to no avail when attempting to install Windows 7 Pro 64 bit SP1. So I decided to see if I could install Windows 10 Pro (v1703) and it installed without any problems. It even loaded the mouse drivers so I could click my way through the install instead of relying on just the keyboard.

Knowing now that my box IS capable of supporting VMs I decided to try something a little more adventurous.

I deleted the original Windows 7 VM and destroyed the zvol I had configured to be used as the disk device for that VM. Then when I created the new zvol I manually selected the block size of 2k under Advanced Mode. When I created the new VM I added a disk device which pointed to the new zvol (with 2k block size) and left the mode set to AHCI, but I manually entered the sector size of 512 (bytes is the default metric). I'm not sure if setting the 512 bytes was necessary, but I wanted to not leave anything to chance. Lastly I attached my cd device and pointed it to my Windows 7 Pro 64 bit SP1 iso and the install went through without a problem, other than I still had to navigate the install menus with my keyboard because the mouse drivers didn't attach.

Hope this helps someone who might be on the verge of giving up!
Thank for info! unfortunately i don't have licensed version of w10, only w7, so i was forced to try use it, and i was successfull to install it with 512 bytes block size, but when it was installed, anyway i was not able to use it because of continous hangs. System simply became stuck when you try to install updates or start any heavy application.
 

shawnmac74

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Feb 15, 2018
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ryanhunt

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Aug 8, 2015
Messages
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Thank you, the 512 byte sector size did the trick for me! One thing that threw me off slightly was that you set the block size when creating the zvol and the sector size when adding the disk device to the VM.

Do you mind sharing what hardware/cpu you have please? I'd like to try this, but I'm on an old AMD (HP N54L) and while I'm sure it won't work, I'd love to think it'll work...
 

shawnmac74

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Joined
Feb 15, 2018
Messages
3
Do you mind sharing what hardware/cpu you have please? I'd like to try this, but I'm on an old AMD (HP N54L) and while I'm sure it won't work, I'd love to think it'll work...

I'm using an Intel Core i3-2120 CPU @ 3.30GHz so nothing too fancy. What model is your AMD processor? Have you checked that it is VTx capable on a site like http://www.cpu-world.com?
 

FreeZM

Dabbler
Joined
Jan 26, 2018
Messages
14
Adressing the mouse problem:
I fiddled around a lot (but I´m a noob...) and finally I found a way:

Install everything with keyboard control, RDP is a way too to make things easier, then install "inside" the running vm an new vnc-server (I used tightvnc) and voilá - everything runs fine with correct mouse AND keyboard control.

Well, I´m happy so far - sometimes vnc is nessesary.

As we can see - there IS a problem bhyve is used in freenas concerning USB-2 / USB-3 and what I read it should be possible to configure it better / right... But I dunno how ;-)

tags: windows 7 bhyve freenas mouse
 

Amsoil_Jim

Contributor
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Messages
175
I was having the issues with installing a windows 7 VM but as I tried again yesterday I got it to work by changing the newly created zvol block size to "512"
this was the only thing I tried different and its installed without a hitch. But then was the issue of the screen size and the mouse not working.
I ended up resolving both of these issues by installing "windows remote desktop" on my computer and now I can access and use the VM in full screen and proper resolution and my mouse works with out any problems.
 

fozters

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Joined
Aug 31, 2013
Messages
1
I was having issue installing win7 x64 uefi mode. Installation would start and after reboot installation proceeded and got stuck on "Windows setup could not configure to run on this computer's hardware" error.

Solution is to press shift+f10 so you'll get cmd promt and run msoobe.exe manually and the installation proceeds (found from some Dell article):

Windows 7:

  1. At the error screen, press Shift+F10 to open a command prompt.
  2. Type cd \ and press Enter.
  3. Type cd c:\windows\system32\oobe and press Enter.
  4. Type msoobe and press Enter. The installation process should now automatically continue.
  5. Remove the installation media and the system should finish the installation and boot into Windows.
e. also additional info:
I used virtio disk & virtio nic & attached virtio-win-0.1.141.iso to a 2nd cd-drive. Like others have said you don't have mouse when you install, using you keyboard is doable. I loaded virtio-scsi driver via installer even it saw my 30G disk. After succeful install press windows button and type cmd and enter you'll get to the command promt. Then start devmgmt.msc and you'll get to device manager and load up virtio nic driver via alt->actions update driver from the same virtio cd still in drive! After that press windows key again and type system and enter. From there you can get via tab key to remote settings and allow rdp connections!

e. from control panel -> network and sharing center you propably wan't to move network location from public to private. Also might be helpful in the beginning disable firewall so you get rdp to the client vm and it's easier to correct the configration from there ...
 
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zer0bitz

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Joined
Dec 2, 2018
Messages
8
Im having a weird issue with trying to install Windows 7 64bit version as a VM.

I get to see the "windows is loading files..." text and "Starting Windows" text also, but right after it loads some drivers or files, it crashes immediately. I read this thread and trying to change those block sizes but not working. Also tried to change Memory size of VM and Virtual CPU's, but still nothing.

Any solution for this?
 

diskdiddler

Wizard
Joined
Jul 9, 2014
Messages
2,374
Figured it out. Using the AHCI/Intel E1000 configuration should work. But I couldn't get it to work reliably. This bhyve/Windows procedure recommends creating your own Windows ISO spin and using an auto installation script. If I had dozens of Windows VM to create, that might be a better way. Since I only needed one, I streamlined the procedure...

1. Put Windows ISO on FreeNAS share.
2. Put VirtIO driver ISO on FreeNAS share.
3. Create VM with TWO CD-ROMs using the above ISOs.
4. Boot from the Windows ISO, grab the drivers off the other ISO.
5. Install Windows.
6. Be happy.

Other tips...

If you want your VM to start properly on reboot of FreeNAS without any human intervention, make sure you do check 'Autostart' and do NOT check 'Wait to boot:' in the VNC device configuration.

Cheers,
Matt


Are these VirtIO drivers still required? - I'm having difficulty installing Windows 10 due to storage issues (no drive or drive has 0 bytes free)
I note, they're very old - are these updated?
 

etegration

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Joined
Nov 22, 2019
Messages
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Are these VirtIO drivers still required? - I'm having difficulty installing Windows 10 due to storage issues (no drive or drive has 0 bytes free)
I note, they're very old - are these updated?

same issue and i tried the above method of loading the virtIO drivers > viostor.inf, does not work for me. on freenas 11.3U2
 

LSmith4285

Cadet
Joined
Apr 10, 2012
Messages
7
Im having a weird issue with trying to install Windows 7 64bit version as a VM.

I get to see the "windows is loading files..." text and "Starting Windows" text also, but right after it loads some drivers or files, it crashes immediately. I read this thread and trying to change those block sizes but not working. Also tried to change Memory size of VM and Virtual CPU's, but still nothing.

Any solution for this?

I know you posted this a while ago but I'm wondering if you managed to fix this issue? It sounds identical to the problem I'm having. The pointer appears on the screen and right before it should give the option to select Language, Time and Currency and keyboard it crashes.

I'm using VirtIO and changed the sector size 512 bytes.
 
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