Imported Win XP Mode from VirtualPC, black screen with blinking cursor

[DerekFlint]

Hello,

Running a Win 7 host, installed MS Virtual PC and Win XP Mode VM, it runs fine. Installed Workstation Player 15.5.6 (free, non-commercial) and vCenter Standalone Converter 6.2.0. Ran Workstation menu selection to import Windows XP Mode, Converter shows successful completion, and the XP Mode VM gets populated in Workstation as it should. Run it, and all I get is the vmware bios boot screen for a couple seconds, and then a black screen with blinking cursor. Restarted, same thing. Deleted VM from disk and re-did all steps, no difference. Downgraded to Workstation 14 and re-did all steps, no difference. Upgraded back to 15, re-did all steps, no difference. Examined vmware bios settings, re-ordered boot sequence to put hard disk at the very top, no difference. Searched this VMTN community and noticed another user posted having similar situation back in Nov 2019, his post is still unanswered 9 months later. Found and tried to follow several of the KB articles for solutions, none worked. Everything says that this has been supported since Workstation 7, what gives? Would appreciate some help.

[DerekFlint]

Nothing. Wow, that says volumes.

[bluefirestorm]

IIRC, XP Mode is tied to the Windows 7 licence that you have.

FWIW, these old posts from another forum in 2009 seem to confirm it; it asks for reactivation when running in VirtualBox.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055777288

So even if you get past the black screen with blinking cursor problem, the activation will likely become an issue.

[wila]

There's a fix for Windows XP in VMware Workstation 16, probably unrelated to your issue though.

Release notes:

VMware Workstation 16 Pro Release Notes

• A Windows XP x64 virtual machine freezes during boot, when Workstation is running on Win10 host with Hyper-V EnabledMSFT has bugs in APIC virtualization that block WinXP SP2 boot process. This issue is now resolved.

Your VM is most likely a 32 bit one, so in that case it is something else.

Make sure the virtual hardware is up to date. You can try disabling 3D acceleration.

Other than that.. not sure, there's not much info to go on right now.

--

Wil

[DerekFlint]

Thanks for the reply, release notes say Workstation 16 requires WIn 10, but I'll be staying on Win 7 Pro x64, and yes, the XP mode VM is 32 bit. I tried disabling 3D acceleration, made no difference.

Thank you!

[wila]

Do other VMs run?

--

Wil

[DerekFlint]

Yes, have an Ubuntu desktop 18.04 amd64 VM that installed and runs fine.

[bluefirestorm]

You could try adding the line

svga.vgaOnly = "TRUE"

to the vmx configuration file.

This will force the VM display to standard VGA 640x480 16-colours (the original IBM PS/2 specification).

As stated before, even if this resolves the black screen, it won't resolve the reactivation of the XP OS.

But if what you are after is the data on the XP Mode, there are other ways to do this. For one you could just add the virtual hard disk to another VM and copy it off from there.

If you wanna keep a running XP Mode, perhaps what you could do is virtualize the Windows 7 and run nested virtualisation for the XP Mode.

[DerekFlint]

Gave the suggested svga option a try, still nothing. Thanks!