I wrote already which system I use (see the third reply). It's Gentoo on AMD64 with the hardened no-multilib profile with qemu-kvm 0.12.4 and SeaBIOS 0.5.1. It isn't really my own build. Since I use Gentoo, it was compiled on my own computer and it's installed in /usr, not in /usr/local. Qemu only gives an error if I use the -L parameter. Still, I can't boot any Windows XP and 2003 install CD. It definitely hangs at boot time, it happens anything in the cpu registers, only EIP and EFL are changing between these values: Command line : > qemu-kvm -L /usr/share/qemu/ -cdrom /srv/vm/win2k3srv.iso -fda /srv/vm/virtio.img -boot d -enable-kvm -monitor stdio (qemu) info kvm kvm support: enabled (qemu) info registers EAX=00000000 EBX=000002fe ECX=00000002 EDX=00000040 ESI=00000000 EDI=00000004 EBP=00000010 ESP=000002e4 EIP=0000e919 EFL=00033246 [---Z-P-] CPL=3 II=0 A20=1 SMM=0 HLT=0 ES =0040 00000400 0000ffff 0000f300 CS =f000 000f0000 0000ffff 0000f300 SS =9f40 0009f400 0000ffff 0000f300 DS =9f40 0009f400 0000ffff 0000f300 FS =230c 000230c0 0000ffff 0000f300 GS =230c 000230c0 0000ffff 0000f300 LDT=0000 00000000 ffffffff 00000000 TR =0028 feffd000 00002088 00008b00 GDT= 0003f000 000003ff IDT= 00000000 0000ffff CR0=00000010 CR2=00000000 CR3=00039000 CR4=00000000 DR0=00000000 DR1=00000000 DR2=00000000 DR3=00000000 DR6=ffff0ff0 DR7=00000400 FCW=037f FSW=0000 [ST=0] FTW=00 MXCSR=00000000 FPR0=0000000000000000 0000 FPR1=0000000000000000 0000 FPR2=0000000000000000 0000 FPR3=0000000000000000 0000 FPR4=0000000000000000 0000 FPR5=0000000000000000 0000 FPR6=0000000000000000 0000 FPR7=0000000000000000 0000 XMM00=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM01=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM02=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM03=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM04=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM05=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM06=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM07=00000000000000000000000000000000 (qemu) info registers EAX=00000000 EBX=000002fe ECX=00000002 EDX=00000040 ESI=00000000 EDI=00000004 EBP=00000010 ESP=000002e4 EIP=0000e91a EFL=00023046 [---Z-P-] CPL=3 II=0 A20=1 SMM=0 HLT=0 ES =0040 00000400 0000ffff 0000f300 CS =f000 000f0000 0000ffff 0000f300 SS =9f40 0009f400 0000ffff 0000f300 DS =9f40 0009f400 0000ffff 0000f300 FS =230c 000230c0 0000ffff 0000f300 GS =230c 000230c0 0000ffff 0000f300 LDT=0000 00000000 ffffffff 00000000 TR =0028 feffd000 00002088 00008b00 GDT= 0003f000 000003ff IDT= 00000000 0000ffff CR0=00000010 CR2=00000000 CR3=00039000 CR4=00000000 DR0=00000000 DR1=00000000 DR2=00000000 DR3=00000000 DR6=ffff0ff0 DR7=00000400 FCW=037f FSW=0000 [ST=0] FTW=00 MXCSR=00000000 FPR0=0000000000000000 0000 FPR1=0000000000000000 0000 FPR2=0000000000000000 0000 FPR3=0000000000000000 0000 FPR4=0000000000000000 0000 FPR5=0000000000000000 0000 FPR6=0000000000000000 0000 FPR7=0000000000000000 0000 XMM00=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM01=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM02=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM03=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM04=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM05=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM06=00000000000000000000000000000000 XMM07=00000000000000000000000000000000 By the way, I have trouble to compile the newest code of qemu.git, but that could be more a bug related to Portage's tree. The used make scripts are from the qemu.git source though.