VM complaining: consider bios upgrade...

[Serge Hallyn]

Quoting jurgen.depicker at let.be (jurgen.depicker at let.be):
> Dear all, 
> 
> On one of my windows Vms (KVM), I get from time to time a 'windows 
> recovered from a serious error' message, and if I click the wonderfully 
> useful (ahum) support link, I reach this page: 
> http://wer.microsoft.com/responses/Response.aspx/1445/en/5.1.2600.2.00010100.3.0?SGD=67dba5c9-dc73-4bb8-8065-512ebd1c74ac 
> 
> I quote the first part of it here: 
> 
> "Consider BIOS upgrade 
> 
> Microsoft is unable to determine the exact cause of this error. However, 
> this problem was most likely caused by an error in your computer’s random 
> access memory (RAM). RAM is the main internal storage area the computer 
> uses to run programs and store data. 

Do you get any crashes before you see this?  Does it happen at startup?
I wonder if perhaps qemu is not shutting down cleanly, or you are hitting
a KSM bug, or you in fact have bad ram.

> During the crash analysis, we noticed the basic input/output system (BIOS) 
> version on this computer does not match the specifications for the central 
> processing unit (CPU), also known as a processor, that is installed on 
> your computer. This can occur when a newer processor is installed on an 
> older system board or older BIOS. Using a BIOS that does not support the 
> installed processor can result in Windows system crashes. Contact your 
> computer manufacturer or motherboard manufacturer for an updated version 
> of BIOS for your computer's processor." 
> 
> 
> Now I'm not sure what this is all about: how can I possibly upgrade my 
> VM's BIOS, or should I do something else?  Can it have something to do 
> with the processor specs in the VM's XML definition?

Odd, I've never heard of this :)  Which version of windows are you using,
and which Ubuntu release are you on?  The bios is just seabios, and should
be tightly integrated into the qemu version, so upgrading is generally not
recommended, but in any case upgrading seabios still wouldn't likely get you
anything Microsoft would know about.

-serge