bhyve How to run win7 on bhyve?

[Selin]

Meanwhile I gave up on Bhyve and switched to VirtualBox.

Will try to do some tests to compare performance difference. But, at least, I successfully installed Windows 2008 R2.
The same for Windows 11 (which requires TPM). The only issue is NVMe drives - it required some custom VM tuning to run:
VBoxManage setextradata <VM name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/nvme/0/Config/MsiXSupported" 0
VBoxManage setextradata <VM name> "VBoxInternal/Devices/nvme/0/Config/CtrlMemBufSize" 0

As a bonus - I'll be able to install Windows XP, because sometimes I need even such an old system. Even Windows 2000...
So I think I'll keep one system with VirtualBox for legacy stuff.

 

[bgavin]

RUFUS configures the boot USB for either MBR or UEFI.

When it boots it checks bios for MBR ability then creates the MBR file system.

No version of windows thru win11 actually requires UEFI. I install Win11 on MBR just fine. I refuse to use UEFI unless MBR is not available. No security certificates, no secure boot and easy to repair. I don’t use large system volumes so UEFI / GPT not required.

I don’t use FBSD except as server not desktop or daily driver.

 

[Espionage724]

I install Win11 on MBR just fine. I refuse to use UEFI unless MBR is not available.

I vaguely recall something about GPU performance with UEFI GOP VBIOS vs Legacy (not sure what but I had a Radeon HD 6000 Legacy for a while and tried a GOP VBIOS for a little); this post implies something with Virtualbox and VGA ROM space, and has an interesting note:

...Btw, I also want to remind you that the display driver of FlashBoot EFI works terrible on VirtualBox (has low fps, that's why I wanted to suggest you gradually patch It over time so it can also be usable on VirtualBox), while on real hardware it works pretty well.

I sometimes change up the install type on fresh installs to see if I notice anything different, but it's usually convient if I needed to do multiple Windows installs (UEFI's easy straight copy to FAT32 USB for one PC, but if I gotta use WoeUSB/Rufus for a Legacy board I may as well do MBR on both )

On Linux, something seemingly oddly affected GNOME log-in CSM vs UEFI (post; it was a gamble to log-in with UEFI)