I am on Slackware 14.2 with qemu 2.6.0 , libvirt 2.1.0, virt-manager 1.4.0

I used the system backup/restore option to load a previous backup in a new KVM guest machine. I have 12 cores allocated to the VM, 32gb of ram, and the storage is qcow2 using the IDE setting. I am using VNC Server for Display and I am also using Cirrus for the video, as when I tried loading the WS SBS 2011 install CD/DVD it would freeze at "Starting Windows" if I selected VGA for the video, however it works fine with Cirrus.

Now, the issue is that when I try to boot the system (restore worked perfectly) I get a BSOD that doesn't tell me any information at all and the VM just reboots. I have tried with both Cirrus video and VGA video, when doing Cirrus I get the BSOD, when doing VGA I just get a black screen followed by the VM rebooting. Any Ideas?

Off hand I'd say it is a HAL issue with respect to Windows and if no linux problem exists.

Where did you get this DVD?

If you can get it to boot once and then fault you might be able to install tools to make event viewer notifications more verbose.
https://social.technet.microsoft.com...businessserver

I'd boot to a different distro and install similar KVM and see if you can create a client maybe.

Thank you for replying! What do you mean by "HAL issue"? Also, I got this DVD many years ago (2011 or 2012) when I bought Windows small business sever 2011, its an official MS dvd or whatever it is called. I can not get it to boot AT ALL,
I don't have any other test machines to put a distro on ATM...I am thinking of starting an install from scratch.

"The Windows NT hardware abstraction layer (HAL) refers to a layer of software that deals directly with your computer hardware. Because the HAL operates at a ..." https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/99588

Windows is fussy about booting on systems that it doesn't have support for by it's installation program. Generally you install to a specific hardware and the machine config is then dedicated to that hardware. Windows also is sometimes fussy about new hardware.

I'd see if I could slipstream the DVD to see if you could also install security patches and hardware updates out of the box install. Also extra drivers may be installed.

If you used Windows before you should know that once you installed certain drivers on it, it will have high chances of crashing if transferred to another hardware platform.
This being said, you specified ide booting. Did you try sata? Windows usually crashes if booted from another type of storage controller than the one that was originally installed to.