It all seems to be working great now. Running Debian default packages and kernels with iommu=off, I used QEMU to run the installer for WinXP and Win2K3. With Xen, both installers seemed to get hung-up at “Setup is Starting…” or thereabouts. In XP, once, I was able to see the F5 menu (only two options in XP) before it hung (still utilizing CPU). In Win2K3 I could never get to the F5 menu leaving me at “Setup is Starting” screen with CPU still being utilized. Using QEMU to get through until the first reboot worked great, and allowed me to proceed to boot using Xen for the subsequent installation process. Both OSes are now up and running, and surprising fast and responsive running on qemu qcow disk images under Xen. Time to test out Solaris, Nexenta and others, and fool around with Suspend/Resume.
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