Windows 7 x86 (32bit) UTM setup

To be able to run some old hardware I need a Windows 7 x86 (32bit) machine. As of May 2024, this turns out not to be obvious to get this running and searching the web for answers to the problems you encounter in trying to set this up can be quite frustrating. So I’m putting this out there in case it can help someone get to goal faster.

Environment

I’m actually running this on a Mac M1 in emulation mode but the biggest challenges I faced were Windows related and had nothing to do with the host system so I think the following applies independently of the host system.

Getting the basic setup

The easiest way to get started is to use the Windows 7 template from the UTM gallery. It is said to be for running Windows x64 but will work fine running Windows x86 just the same. Beware that I first tried to just create my own config from scratch but I ended up with a VM that didn’t have the mouse and keyboard drivers so even though the installer was kicking in all right it was impossible to go beyond the first dialog box which expects user input. I wasted a lot of time trying “solutions” found online trying to fix this when all it required was to use the provided template to avoid the problem.

Once you have downloaded the UTM template and unzipped it, the best in my experience is to “open” the Windows 7.utm file from the UTM application so that it shows up in the list of virtual machines and then clone it so that it creates a new VM with a file in the UTM data folder. Otherwise your machine will keep depending on that file you probably have in your Download folder and is at risk of getting lost.

Once it’s cloned you can just remove the machine related to the template from the list.

There are two changes I recommend making to the template:

• The first one is bumping the memory to 2GB. This is said to be the limit for Windows 7 x86 and trying to set it to higher made the install hang for me. Once installed on the other hand changing the memory to 4GB doesn’t have any bad effect although it won’t really gain anything either.
• The second change is the size of the disk which is set to 20GB. I changed it to 40GB. Although UTM supports resizing the disk afterwards this is still experimental and you may not be able to get the partitions easily resized so you’re better off starting with the right size.

The other thing to watch out for is that the link to download the Guest tools ISO for Windows in the UTM documentation points to an old version (0.164.4) that no longer works. Make sure to get the newer version: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/releases/download/v4.4.4/utm-guest-tools-0.229.iso (I’m going to submit a PR to get it fixed).

The Windows installation ISO file can be found in various places, I used the one from: https://www.itechtics.com/windows-7-download-iso/#download-windows-7-professional

This will allow you to get started and run Windows for a few days. Then you will need to enter a valid key to activate your Windows installation.

Make sure your the IDE Drive in your UTM config points to the file you downloaded and you’re ready to start the installation by simply booting the machine.

Fixing Windows Update

The Windows installation went smoothly for me with the above setup. However, once started Windows Update didn’t work and although I had an internet connection trying to access the web with the old Internet Explorer that comes with the install failed on most websites although I could access Bing and Google all right.

I again spent a lot of time trying to fix this problem following various misleading “solutions” I could find online, until I eventually figured that the problem actually came from expired certificates. You can fix that but there is no need because fixing Windows Update will allow you to update your system and get a fix for that problem at the same time.

The key to fixing Windows Update is simply to download (on your host machine) Windows update KB3138612, access it through your shared folder and run it on your Windows machine. Once this is applied, Windows Update should work and you can start the (very long) process of updating your OS using it. I was glad to run into a post which led me to this fix because the description on the update page doesn’t make it easy to find it directly!

I hope this helps.

Enjoy!