Windows 7 guest will sometimes BSOD after resume from saved state

[Pedro Côrte-Real]

I get a blue screen crash on Windows 7 after resuming it from saved state. This is a VM that I've ran without issues in virtualbox until now and have recently moved to virt-manager instead. I don't know what kind of information is needed to diagnose this.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: qemu-kvm 1:2.11+dfsg-1ubuntu7.4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-29.31-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-29-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Thu Aug 2 17:10:20 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-05-31 (63 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180426)
Lsusb:
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 004: ID 138a:0090 Validity Sensors, Inc.
 Bus 001 Device 003: ID 5986:0706 Acer, Inc
 Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp.
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
MachineType: LENOVO 20FAS5TS00
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-29-generic root=UUID=0206141b-5758-4895-bbbd-8022b1e78519 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=1
SourcePackage: qemu
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 03/22/2018
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: N1CET66W (1.34 )
dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
dmi.board.name: 20FAS5TS00
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: SDK0J40697 WIN
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: None
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrN1CET66W(1.34):bd03/22/2018:svnLENOVO:pn20FAS5TS00:pvrThinkPadT460s:rvnLENOVO:rn20FAS5TS00:rvrSDK0J40697WIN:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNone:
dmi.product.family: ThinkPad T460s
dmi.product.name: 20FAS5TS00
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad T460s
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

There is so many virtual HW involved that could make Win7 trip over it, I can't give you a good solution either other than if one could actually read/debug the BSOD (I can't) to have a start where to look for.

The submitted dmesg and KVMcmd does not look suspicious to me - I've heard (but never had on my own) cases where switching type pc-i440fx-bionic->pc-q35-bionic helped with KVM+BSOD-Win7 - maybe worth a try, but since Win isn't so tolerant on changing HW that means re-install the guest.

There isn't enough data (Linux logs LGTM), but also not much I could ask for (no BSOD expert) right now, sorry :-/

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

It seems virt-manager doesn't have a way to change that architecture easily. I'll have to fiddle with the XML to see if I can get it to work. For now I've tried changing the CPU to be the same as the host to see if that helps in any way. It's not that much of a hassle though.

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

Changing the CPU didn't help and it seems changing to q35 will BSOD on startup as expected. Need to figure out if there's a simple way to repair the install without reinstalling. I may just need to get a Windows 10 image instead if that's more compatible in general. But I wonder about video drivers in that case. Is there a place with general guidelines of the best configs for Windows under qemu/kvm?

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Sorry I'm not using windows guests at all, so no personal recomendations.
And the few that report errors with them are usually Ubuntu Advantage customers that go through other service lines and only rarely will show up to me.

There is this from upstream, but I don't know how up to date it is: https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers
I'd expect the Ubuntu community has something up, but as I said I'm not a user of it.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/CreateGuests Seems rather old, http://www.geekpills.com/operating-system/linux/nstalling-windows-xp-kvm-platform-ubuntu-16-04-lts as well.

Sorry this just isn't my home turf - maybe the links from https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Windows_10_guest_best_practices#Install_additional_VirtIO_drivers_on_running_System help - the ISO
After all https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/latest-virtio/virtio-win.iso could be what you need.

Marking incomplete util we know any better, as currently this isn't actionable :-/

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

Thanks for all the pointers. Drivers I've been able to get done, everything is now virtio/QXL and working ok. I meant more things like hardware setup to avoid BSOD and which are the best versions of windows to run. I'll probably try and run Windows 10 at some point to see if it works better. But my current setup is decent already.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for qemu (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]