Upgrading my Gaming VM to Windows 7: Part 1

In a previous post, I talked about how my Windows XP Gaming VM somehow lost performance.  It was all of a sudden, and nothing changed in the VM.  In fact, the VM was off for a period of two weeks.  Before then, no performance problem.  After then, performance problem.  I tried various things to regain the lost performance, but I gave up.  I have now decided to upgrade to Windows 7 64bit.

I few things led me down this path.  First, my wife hasn't had the time to play Angry Birds (hence the VM being off for two weeks).  It doesn't seem like she's going to be playing any time soon, so its a good time for an upgrade.  Second, I really need to upgrade from XM to XL.  To upgrade to XL, I have to stop using my PCI USB controller card.  If I upgrade to Windows 7, then I can use a PCI-Express USB controller card.  I have verified that card works in Windows 7, because I had a Windows 7 VM that I used to upgrade my phone.  The PCI-Express card did not work in Windows XP, though.  By upgrading to the PCI-Express card, that removed my only obstacle to using XL.

After performing the base install, I shut down the VM and made a snapshot.  I then installed the AMD drivers for my HD7870.  The AMD install asked to reboot.  It got stuck on "Applying update operation 44 of 44 (\Registry\Machine\System\Curre....) for over 1/2 hour.

I was just about to force a virtual hardware reboot when I heard the Windows 7 boot sound.  I looked up and my TV was displaying the log in screen!  I didn't even have to enable gfx_passthrough=1.  I got my mouse and keyboard and they didn't work!  I forgot to set up the USB controller card or set up remote desktop.  I shut down the VM, took out the video card from the pci passthrough list.  I booted up the VM, enabled remote desktop, and installed the USB controller card drivers.  I rebooted with the video card back in the pci passthrough list.  The boot sound played, then an aweful stuck sound occured.  My VNC window showed a BSOD.  The system kept rebooting with the Windows boot sound, the aweful stuck sound, and a BSOD of the VNC window.  The BSOD disappeard too fast, but I think it was the atikmap.sys file that it was complaining about.  I found a forum post that talked about some of the problems.  Apparently XL is buggier than XM when it comes to VGA Passthrough.   I tried various different things, but to no avail.  I decided to revert to my post-install snapshot and try again.