How to Install Windows NT 4 Server on Proxmox

Summary

How to Install Windows NT 4 Server on Proxmox Published on: 2025-05-23 18:41:50 • 5 min read Windows NT 4 Server Boot Screen What? Windows NT 4 doesn't virtualise well. This guide shows how to do it with Proxmox with a minimal amount of pain. Why? I never got to use it and I only have so much room for old computers. You Will Need VM Creation First upload all the ISO files thorough Proxmox's web interface. Now create a new VM with these settings. General ISO Image: en_winnt_4.0_svr.iso OS Guest OS Type: Microsoft Windows Guest OS Version: 2000 System Graphic card: Standard VGA. This will allow for higher resolution settings rather than with the default. SCSI Controller: LSI 53C895A Disks Disk size: 4GB. I could not get it to format a boot drive larger than this. Bus/Device: SCSI. IMPORTANT: Do NOT use IDE. It will be slow noticeably slower and for some reason leads to file system corruption on NT4 guests despite changing the caching options. CPU Sockets: 1 Cores: 1 Type: Pentium. IMPORTANT: The default CPU selection will lead to an immediate BSOD from the installer. Memory Memory (MiB): 256. 32 or higher will suffice. Network Model: Realtek RTL8139. This post says to manually edit the VM config to enable the AMD PCNET card which NT4 has built in support for, but it only runs at 10 Mb/s. The RTL8139 will allow for 100 Mb/s, but we have to install the driver post installation. Now we have to make the SCSI drivers available to the Windows installer. It only accepts additional mass storage drivers as a floppy disk. Proxmox does not have a web interface for managing floppies so we have to configure this from the command line. Replace VM_ID in the following steps with the ID of your VM. Transfer lsi_533895a_floppy.img to the Proxmox server and move it to /var/lib/vz/images/VM_ID/floppy.img. Open /etc/pve/qemu-server/VM_ID.conf, add this to the bottom, then save. args: -drive file=/var/lib/vz/images/VM_ID/floppy.img,if=floppy,index=0 OS Installation Switch to the VM's conso...