BSOD with Longhorn Installation

I downloaded the "Windows Server Longhorn (x64) Checked/Debug Build February 2007 CTP - DVD (English)" ISO image from MSDN. I went to bed when the download was less than halfway completed, and Vista Ultimate x64 estimated another 3 hours and 39 minutes to complete the download.

The download was completed by the time I checked it the following morning. I burned the ISO image to a DVD and went to work.

After dinner, I attempted to finally install Longhorn on the new disk drive I had added to Nighthawk the previous day.

The installation displayed the "Windows is loading files..." message with the progress bar.

Immediately after the loading of files completed, the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) was displayed with the following codes:

STOP: 0x0000007E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000420, 0xFFFFF8000A5CF037, 0xFFFFFA6001BB9DD8, 0xFFFFFA6001BB97A0)

I restarted and tried the installation again with the same result.

What about installing Longhorn in a virtual PC using Virtual PC 2007?

Good idea!

The installation in a virtual PC displayed the "Windows is loading files..." message with the progress bar.

It was a promising start, but unfortunately Virtual PC 2007 is unable to support x64 operating systems.

The error message displayed by the Longhorn installation was: "Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this CPU is not compatible with 64-bit mode."

Although Nighthawk is running an x64 Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 CPU, Virtual PC 2007 emulates an x86 processor. I checked the BIOS for the virtual PC to check whether this could be changed. Unfortunately, the emulated processor type cannot be changed in Virtual PC 2007.

I needed the x86 version of Longhorn to install in a virtual PC, so I started downloading the "Windows Server Longhorn (x86) February 2007 CTP - DVD (English)" ISO image from MSDN.

However, my goal is to install Longhorn in its own disk drive in Nighthawk alongside Windows XP MCE 2005 and Vista Ultimate x64 in a multi-boot environment.

I suspect that the Longhorn installation BSOD was a result of Longhorn unable to cope with the other 2 operating systems already installed in Nighthawk.

My next step is to solve this problem before I install Longhorn x86 in a virtual PC using Virtual PC 2007.