Virtual PC 5 on Windows 9x, Problems and Solutions

If you have solutions (or problems), please contact me and I'll add them.

NTKERN Protection Error on boot

This issue can happen when your system has a large amount of RAM. (Above 512MB?)

When this happens, add MaxPhysPage=08000 to system.ini, start Windows, remove line, then reboot.
You will need to repeat this process every time the issue occurs.

Virtual PC cannot be installed on this operating system

This error occurs due to KernelEx. It will happen even if KernelEx is globally disabled.
There are two ways to fix this:

Option 1 (remove the checks)

Use Orca to remove the checks from the MSI. (instructions coming soon)

Option 2 (temporarily disable KernelEx)

Disable KernelEx VXD in msconfig, restart, install Virtual PC then reenable KEx, restart

Virtual PC can't be run under compatibility mode

Delete the registry key HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags then run it again

If nothing else is in it you can just delete HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT as nothing uses it by default

Networking doesn't work under Windows NT-based guests

To fix this you will need to manually configure the network.

First, open the Properties of the Virtual Machine, and note the IP address.

Open the network control panel and set adapter properties as follows:

• Set the IP address to what VPC reports
• The subnet mask is 255.255.255.0
• The gateway is the IP address but the last part is 254 (example 192.168.131.254)
• Set DNS to a known DNS like 8.8.8.8

(Please note that commands like ping will not work even when the network is)

Windows 9x guests can't access SMB shares

This is unrelated to NTLMv2 as it can't even see the share, let alone handshake it.

There is no solution, but you can use shared folders and drag and drop to copy files.

"It's now safe to turn off your computer" after VPC 4 upgrade

You can just shut down the VM, but to fix this, you need to turn on ACPI in the BIOS and reinstall Windows. A repair install will keep your programs and settings.

ACPI errors when installing Windows Vista and 7

Turn on ACPI in the BIOS. Note that installing NT 6 is not recommended or officially supported.

Virtual PC hangs when running Vista and 7

Turn off Shared Networking and maybe reconsider using NT6 in VPC.

This will happen even if you manually configure the network as above. There is no fix at this time, you must disable shared networking.

Use Virtual PC 5.2 on Windows 9x

In the install folder, rename the old Virtual PC.exe to Virtual PC.old. Copy the Virtual PC 5.2 executable to the folder. With KernelEx, set the compatibility of the copied Virtual PC 5.2 executable to NT 4.0 SP6a.

This was tested with KernelEx 4.5.2019, so try using that version if it doesn't work.

Some solutions are from this video by loganius and are provided here for reference.