I--- Windows Xp Qcow2 [90% FULL]

Closing the VM window produces a sudden darkness. The emulated CPU halts. The allocated RAM frees up. The Windows_XP.qcow2 file sits dormant again, a static binary on a drive that will one day fail.

To make Windows XP run fast on a modern Linux host (Ubuntu, Debian, Proxmox), you need to inject VirtIO drivers for disk and network during installation. However, official Microsoft support ended before VirtIO matured. The community provides (version 0.1.173 or older works with XP). i--- Windows Xp Qcow2

Practical tips and troubleshooting