STOP error while installing Windows Server 2016 on KVM VPS

user123

I'm trying to install Windows Server 2016 on my new HH 1.5TB KVM VPS, but can't seem to get past the initial setup step of "loading files" with the white progress bar at the bottom of the screen. After that, it throws a "System Thread Exception Not Handled" error every time. What am I missing? I'm currently tethering off of my (limited) phone data since my ISP is a POS, so I've been a bit limited in terms of viewing video tutorials, image-heavy pages, and stuff like that.

I had mounted the GParted iso and created a 40GB primary OS partition with a second partition with the remaining space (for data) and am using an official/untouched OS installation ISO (with correct hash).

I'm going to open a ticket to see if they can set it to enable CPU Host pass through, but other than that and trying to have my CP redownload the ISO, I'm out of ideas.

WSS

Obviously, you're missing hardware support, and likely a license.

mmuyskens

@WSS said:
Obviously, you're missing hardware support, and likely a license.

Who needs legit licenses when you have Dreamspark....

Francisco

I would check to see if your CPU to see if it says it's an Intel/AMD, or if it says QEMU.

Francisco

user123

Support said it should work if I add the virtio drivers to my OS ISO, so I did that, but keep getting the same stop error.

@Francisco said:
I would check to see if your CPU to see if it says it's an Intel/AMD, or if it says QEMU.

My control panel terminal says QEMU.

simlev

Are you trying to install Windows 2016 on 1GB RAM? Bear in mind the minimum requirements cite 2GB instead.

saibal

simlev said: minimum requirements cite 2GB instead

If the desktop experience is installed, 512MB otherwise. However:

If you create a virtual machine with the minimum supported hardware parameters (1 processor core and 512 MB RAM) and then attempt to install this release on the virtual machine, Setup will fail. +

To avoid this, do one of the following:

Allocate more than 800 MB RAM to the virtual machine you intend to install this release on. Once Setup has completed, you can change the allocation to as little as 512 MB RAM, depending on the actual server configuration.
Interrupt the boot process of this release on the virtual machine with SHIFT+F10. In the command prompt that opens, use Diskpart.exe to create and format an installation partition. Run Wpeutil createpagefile /path=C:\pf.sys (assuming the installation partition you created was C:). Close the command prompt and proceed with Setup

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/system-requirements

Ishaq

Ask them to enable host pass-through, then try again.

WSS

..because everyone else on the system wants a Windows box sharing the hardware with their own warm storage..

Not to outright be a dick (although I am). If you can't slipstream the proper VirtIO drivers, I strongly question your abilities to mange a windows box on a shared platform.

Have the host change the drive to ide, and your ethernet to e1000, or you can probably install Windows just fine by following the standard ProxMox-suggested standards after ensuring your CPU is no longer QEMU emulated.

Francisco

@Ishaq said:
Ask them to enable host pass-through, then try again.

S'what I was getting at.

You can't boot 2012 or 2016 on QEMU CPU's, it has to be in host passthrough.

Francisco

hosthatch

Do you have a ticket # I can look at? Thanks!

hosthatch

Nevermind, I see it now.

user123 said: Support said it should work if I add the virtio drivers to my OS ISO, so I did that, but keep getting the same stop error.

I think Mike answered that to your question about 'how to upload virtio ISO' - he answered that you should slipstream the drivers into the ISO. He didn't mean that this will fix the issue you are having.

user123 said: My control panel terminal says QEMU.

If you mean the noVNC console - it just shows you "QEMU - VM identifier" - has nothing to do with your CPU. The way to check if CPU passthrough is enabled is (as mentioned in the ticket) to load a Linux OS from one of our templates and see /proc/cpuinfo. That is what @Francisco was referring to, whether it says QEMU CPU or if it shows an actual Intel/AMD CPU. If it shows QEMU CPU, then the passthrough is not configured and we'll need to fix that.

FYI - passthrough is the default setting on all our servers, so I don't think your issue is that.

user123

@saibal I only saw the 512MB minimum requirement and missed seeing the 2GB requirement. The VPS has 1GB RAM, though I don't think that is the problem I'm having, since I can't even get it to load the setup. I did also see some data points of people running standard (production) installs of Server 2016 on <1GB RAM without requiring any tweaking.

@Ishaq @Francisco Thanks, pass-through is already enabled, per support. /proc/cpuinfo also shows Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz.

@WSS I did slipstream the VirtIO drivers into the image.

@Abdullah thanks for clarifying what Mike meant.

WSS

@user123 There are SEVERAL versions of the VirtIO drivers, and they're not all compatible. You probably need the VirtIO SCSI, and need to hit F8 at initial install to make it install a not-completely-APIC compatible kernel.. but then again, meh.

user123

@WSS said:

Thanks! I've done that on local installs, but never encountered that prompt text for loading additional drives at the bottom of the loading screen with this install. While F8 let me choose to boot Windows Setup into safe mode, it still fails in the same way and does not give me any option to load other drivers. For the VirtIO drivers, I followed this DO guide: https://www.vultr.com/docs/windows-custom-iso-with-virtio-drivers.

WSS

No, it's F8/F10 before Windows loads. I can't remember which one, but holding one of those before the GUI loads (at the blue screen) will (or did) force it to use a more compatible kernel without APIC.

That HowTo looks to use the most recent VirtIO drivers, so I have no idea why it's angry. You might try taking a picture and posting it, or typing out the entire stop code.

user123

@WSS said:
No, it's F8/F10 before Windows loads. I can't remember which one, but holding one of those before the GUI loads (at the blue screen) will (or did) force it to use a more compatible kernel without APIC.

That HowTo looks to use the most recent VirtIO drivers, so I have no idea why it's angry. You might try taking a picture and posting it, or typing out the entire stop code.

Windows doesn't load. What's happening is that I'm hitting a button to load from (mounted) CD/DVD, then madly pressing F8 or F10 while it shows the white "loading" progress bar. Once it finished that loading bar, it goes directly to the STOP error screen with the message I posted in my first post and no additional details.

I originally thought it was F10 and had already tried both F8 and F10. F10 didn't let me do it, either. F10 does let me select some boot source, but it's not the driver-specific screen I'm used to seeing.

F10:

Stop error:

WSS

Force a CPU fallback, with the hosts' assistance. Obviously passthru isn't giving it all that it wants, for whatever reason. That's not even failing on the disk.

https://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsCPU

user123

@WSS said:
Force a CPU fallback, with the hosts' assistance. Obviously passthru isn't giving it all that it wants, for whatever reason. That's not even failing on the disk.

https://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsCPU

Thanks, I'll ask if they can change it to CPU fallback for me.