Run Windows XP in qemu on Raspberry Pi 2

Question

It's possible to run Windows XP in qemu on Raspberry Pi 2? Loading Windows XP would be very slow?

Answer 1

That other question referenced by Ghanima includes an answer which refers to a youtube video showing Windows XP boot in QEMU on a non-2 model (they all have the same processor, GPU; the A/A+ has less RAM). That video is still around and it does seem that it takes 20+ minutes for XP to boot.¹

If there were a native version for the pi, it would be much quicker; hardware emulators slow things down drastically. They are intended more for use in development than to deliver a nice end-user experience, and of course there is no point in developing x86 Windows XP software on a Raspberry Pi unless you are some kind of masochist.

So, the pi 2 has been described as 6 times faster than the previous versions. Figures contrasting multicore to single core execution times are a bit idealized in that they will only apply to certain situations. I haven't done any benchmarks but I'd say when doing general purpose things that can be multi-threaded to some extent, the Pi 2 is 3-4 times faster (with an ARMv7 userland).

But let's assume 6 times.

21.5 / 6 = ~3.6

So you might be able to boot Windows XP in under 4 minutes! In reality I think it will be more, presuming XP doesn't really exploit multiple cores much in boot (maybe it does, I'm just guessing).

The only way to find out for sure is to try...but I think you are going to be very disappointed.

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^{1. I left that video running while writing this and after 17 minutes, still no taskbar. Exciting stuff.}