For what it's worth, I'm having the exact same issues.
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 9:13 AM, Ed Welch <e...@edjusted.com
<mailto:e...@edjusted.com>> wrote:
Hey everyone, new to qubes, love it!
Getting going with linux I found pretty straight
forward, no issues.
Trying to get a Windows 7 HVM template created, not
going so well.
Thought I would post some of the issues I've had for
posterity and also see if I can get some help.
If you are like me and don't generally read long winded
posts, please at least scroll to my QUESTION at the
bottom :)
Most of the instructions tell you to create a VM,
however, none of them tell you to increase the default
VM specs. For win 7 64 it seems you want to increase
the RAM to 4096MB and primary partition to 40960MB (40G)
I know for a fact 20G is not enough to update windows 7
sp1 to latest.
You'll want to do this before anything else because it's
more difficult to do after you get started
Then I ran into the xen/cirrus video driver issue which
causes windows to freeze on the startup screen, found
this issue with workaround:
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2488
<https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2488>
This workaround does the trick, but I think it's
important to note a few additional steps, after the last
setup reboot and BEFORE YOU SHUTDOWN windows and try to
install the windows guest additions.
MAKE SURE to enable login without password through the
netplwiz tool, it seemed like this was the crucial step
in avoiding this issue:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/qubes-users/Vbga8Z-DjHE/GVHIWIob5uIJ
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21msg/qubes-users/Vbga8Z-DjHE/GVHIWIob5uIJ>
Also, users mentioned in that thread the importance of
adding more RAM, however, for me it seemed that enabling
login without password was the step that avoided putting
your VM in a totally unrecoverable BSOD loop.
Following the wiki instructions, I then installed the
windows tools from the qubes-dom0-current-testing repo
(and also updated the qrexec_timeout to 300 seconds)
then switching back to the modified instructions for
working around the cirrus/xen bug I was able to boot
into windows and install the windows tools.
This is where I hit my next big stumbling point, during
the installation the PV drivers prompt you to reboot. DO
NOT REBOOT until the installation finishes, I did
eventually see on this page 'Xen PV driver components
may display a message box asking for reboot during
installation – it’s safe to ignore them and defer the
reboot.'
Really this needs to be promoted to
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/windows-appvms/
<https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/windows-appvms/> IMO and
in big bold letters DO NOT REBOOT until the installation
is completed kind of thing. If you reboot before it
finishes this is really unrecoverable and it's easier to
just blow away the vm and start again...
Ok, so now we get to where I'm stuck, my vm is
installed, qubes-windows-tools 3.2.2-3 is installed,
however as soon as I start the thing, it boots and the
display immediately goes away, found this issue:
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/1896
<https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/1896>
which matches the behavior I'm seeing, however, this was
fixed some time ago, but not totally sure when it was
released??
My second, issue, which may actually be causing the
first, seems to best be described in this thread:
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/qubes-users/4OgwojFK-sI/discussion
<https://groups.google.com/d/topic/qubes-users/4OgwojFK-sI/discussion>
Specifically I'm having the issue in the last comment,
the only way I can get any UI is if I boot with --debug,
and when I do, I often see that error linked: 'The GUI
agent that runs in the VM 'win7' implements outdated
protocol (0:0), and must be updated.
After reading through that thread, several people were
mentioning that 3.2.2-3 has seemed to make things less
stable.
What I would like to do, is install the previous version
of qubes-windows-tools, but try as I might to manipulate
the qubes-dom0-update script into doing so I have not
been able to do this, I'm not even sure the older
versions are kept in the repos??
QUESTION: Is there a way to install a specific version
(whatever was previous to 3.2.2-3) of qubes windows tools?
Thanks!
Ed
