I have Ubuntu 20.04 server as my host machine and QEMU-KVM v6.0.0 as hypervisor. I created simple virtual machine configuration using SATA storage and successfully installed Windows 7 SP1 64 bit. After this all manuals suggest to add temporary virtio disk, get Windows 7 to install necessary drivers and then switch to new disk type.
I downloaded a set of latest stable drivers from https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/, attached a downloaded image file to virtual machine and attempted to install drivers.
Nothing worked at all. Windows 7 successfully identifies driver files as being signed by Red Hat Inc., however it refuses to load drivers because it is unable to verify digital signature until any trusted root certificates.
I might be able to sacrifice some disk IO performance, I might not need to run virtual machine at absolute maximum IO speeds, but exactly the same situation is observed with 3 other devices, exported from hypervisor: graphics, ACPI, memory manager and something else…
I might be missing something, since even this post on this site suggest to install drivers for Windows 10 from the same location and Windows 7 and Windows 10 are no different in regard with driver signatures.
How to properly configure Virt-Manager (QEMU/KVM) with Windows guest
Please, help.
I have Ubuntu 20.04 server as my host machine and QEMU-KVM v6.0.0 as hypervisor. I created simple virtual machine configuration using SATA storage and successfully installed Windows 7 SP1 64 bit. After this all manuals suggest to add temporary virtio disk, get Windows 7 to install necessary drivers and then switch to new disk type.
I downloaded a set of latest stable drivers from https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/, attached a downloaded image file to virtual machine and attempted to install drivers.
Nothing worked at all. Windows 7 successfully identifies driver files as being signed by Red Hat Inc., however it refuses to load drivers because it is unable to verify digital signature until any trusted root certificates.
I might be able to sacrifice some disk IO performance, I might not need to run virtual machine at absolute maximum IO speeds, but exactly the same situation is observed with 3 other devices, exported from hypervisor: graphics, ACPI, memory manager and something else…
I might be missing something, since even this post on this site suggest to install drivers for Windows 10 from the same location and Windows 7 and Windows 10 are no different in regard with driver signatures.
How to properly configure Virt-Manager (QEMU/KVM) with Windows guest
Please, help.
Virtio-win guest tools installer is a msi (Microsoft installer) created with Wix Toolset which installs:
Virtio-win drivers — KVM/QEMUY windows guest drivers for both paravirtual and emulated hardware, more on Github Repo.
Spice guest agent and driver — Spice is an open remote computing solution, providing client access to remote machine display and devices, more info on the Offical website.
The installer can be built in two ways, using oVirt CI mock runner tool and a manual build using make.
Before buidling the installer you must have the virtio-win drivers localy on the format which they are distributed on the iso:
|-Balloon['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', '2k3', '2k8', '2k8R2', 'w10', 'w11', 'w7', 'w8', 'w8.1', 'xp']
|-NetKVM['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', '2k3', '2k8', '2k8R2', 'w10', 'w11', 'w7', 'w8', 'w8.1', 'xp']
|-pvpanic['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', '2k8', '2k8R2', 'w10', 'w11', 'w7', 'w8', 'w8.1']
|-fwcfg['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', 'w10', 'w11', 'w8', 'w8.1']
|-qemupciserial['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', '2k8', '2k8R2', 'w10', 'w11', 'w7', 'w8', 'w8.1']
|-vioinput['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', '2k8R2', 'w10', 'w11', 'w7', 'w8', 'w8.1']
|-viorng['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', '2k8', '2k8R2', 'w10', 'w11', 'w7', 'w8', 'w8.1']
|-vioscsi['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', '2k8', '2k8R2', 'w10', 'w11', 'w7', 'w8', 'w8.1']
|-vioserial['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', '2k3', '2k8', '2k8R2', 'w10', 'w11', 'w7', 'w8', 'w8.1', 'xp']
|-viostor['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', '2k3', '2k8', '2k8R2', 'w10', 'w11', 'w7', 'w8', 'w8.1', 'xp']
|-viofs['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', 'w10', 'w11', 'w8', 'w8.1']
|-viogpu['2k12', '2k12R2', '2k16', '2k19', '2k22', 'w10', 'w11', 'w8', 'w8.1']
24 Jan 2022
problem
Install Window-7 in KVM with latest virtio-win drivers,
but seems the virtio-win driver doesn’t work: windows-7 installer can’t recognized the right driver.
resolve
google and try previous versions, and finally got the latest version that worked with Window-7:
virtio-win-0.1.189.iso
#Note: here “189.iso works” just means that windows installer could find available driver from 189.iso,
but virtio-win-gt-x64.msi and virtio-win-guest-tools.exe always doesn’t work, and qemu-ga-x64,qemu-ga-x86_64 works fine
virtio-win-0.1.215.iso, virtio-win-0.1.208.iso, virtio-win-0.1.204.iso, virtio-win-0.1.196.iso and virtio-win-0.1.190.iso all can not work with Win7
ref:
virtio-win-drivers-with-win7
see also:
install Windows 11 on KVM
Screen Shots:
Introduction
VirtIO Drivers are paravirtualized drivers for kvm/Linux (see http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Virtio). In short, they enable direct (paravirtualized) access to devices and peripherals for virtual machines using them, instead of slower, emulated, ones.
A quite extended explanation about VirtIO drivers can be found here http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-virtio.
At the moment these kind of devices are supported:
- block (disks drives), see Paravirtualized Block Drivers for Windows
- network (ethernet cards), see Paravirtualized Network Drivers for Windows
- balloon (dynamic memory management), see Dynamic Memory Management
You can maximize performances by using VirtIO drivers. The availability and status of the VirtIO drivers depends on the guest OS and platform.
Windows OS Support
Windows does not have native support for VirtIO devices included.
But, there is excellent external support through opensource drivers, which are available compiled and signed for Windows:
https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/?C=M;O=D
Note that this repository provides not only the most recent, but also many older versions.
Those older versions can still be useful when a Windows VM shows instability or incompatibility with a newer driver version.
The binary drivers are digitally signed by Red Hat, and will work on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows
Installation
Using the ISO
You can download the latest stable or you can download the most recent build of the ISO.
Normally the drivers are pretty stable, so one should try out the most recent release first.
You can access the ISO in a VM by mounting the ISO with a virtual CD-ROM/DVD drive on that VM.
Wizard Installation
You can use an easy wizard to install all, or a selection, of VirtIO drivers.
- Open the Windows Explorer and navigate to the CD-ROM drive.
- Simply execute (double-click on) virtio-win-gt-x64
- Follow its instructions.
- (Optional) use the virtio-win-guest-tools wizard to install the QEMU Guest Agent and the SPICE agent for an improved remote-viewer experience.
- Reboot VM
Manual Installation
- Open the Windows Explorer and navigate to the CD-ROM drive.
- There you can see that the ISO consists of several directories, each having sub-directories for supported OS version (for example, 2k19, 2k12R2, w7, w8.1, w10, …).
- Balloon
- guest-agent
- NetKVM
- qxl
- vioscsi
- …
- Navigate to the desired driver directories and respective Windows Version
- Right-click on the file with type «Setup Information»
- A context menu opens, select «Install» here.
- Repeat that process for all desired drivers
- Reboot VM.
Downloading the Wizard in the VM
You can also just download the most recent virtio-win-gt-x64.msi or virtio-win-gt-x86.msi from inside the VM, if you have already network access.
Then just execute it and follow the installation process.
Troubleshooting
Try an older version of the drivers first, if that does not help ask in one of our support channels:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Get_support
Further Reading
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/creating-windows-virtual-machines-using-virtio-drivers/index.html
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers
The source code of those drivers can be found here: https://github.com/virtio-win/kvm-guest-drivers-windows
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers
See also
- Paravirtualized Block Drivers for Windows
- Paravirtualized Network Drivers for Windows
- Dynamic Memory Management