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There might be an easy answer to this. I have exhausted my search on google for a solution. Here's my problem.

I need to get Windows working on a KVM vps with virtualizor CP. As I get into windows installation in VNC, there's the mandatory driver installation requirement, as HDD is in virtio. There seems to be 2 solutions:

  1. Mount the virtio iso in the CD drive by unmounting Windows ISO and proceed with driver installation.
  2. Create a secondary CD drive and mount the virtio iso there.

Well, 1st step never seems to work. If I unload the Windows iso and load the virtio iso, it never reflects back in the VNC.

Second step I have yet to be successfull. I try to create a second IDE CD ROM drive via virt-manager but the virtio (virtio-win-0.1-30.iso) iso is never listed in there, whereas i specially placed it in /var/lib/libvirt/images folder.

Any suggestions on where I screwed up?

malat
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Swifty
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2 Answers2

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The normal way to do this installation is:

  1. Create the VM with a virtualized IDE disk, not a virtio disk.

    Before running the installation, choose to customize the hardware, and attach a second virtual hard drive which does use virtio.

    enter image description here

    This hard drive need only be a temporary drive; it could be a tiny 1GB blank something or other.

    enter image description here

  2. Install Windows. (I presume you need no help with this.)

  3. Attach the ISO image containing the virtio drivers.

    enter image description here

  4. You'll be notified by popup of hardware for which drivers failed to install. Click on it, or enter Device Manager yourself.

    enter image description here

  5. Right click on SCSI Controller, and choose Update Device Driver. Choose to Browse my computer for driver software.

    enter image description here

  6. Click Browse, then navigate to the \win7\amd64 folder on the virtual CD, and then click OK. Click Next.

    enter image description here

  7. The Red Hat VirtIO SCSI controller driver will be detected. Install it.

    enter image description here

  8. Shut down the VM.

  9. Detach the second virtual hard drive. Optionally, delete it. It was temporary, after all.

    enter image description here

  10. Select the first virtual IDE hard drive, expand Advanced options, change the Disk bus to Virtio, then click Apply.

    enter image description here

  11. Start the VM.

    enter image description here

If something goes wrong here, run Startup Repair using these instructions.

And at this point, you can run sysprep /generalize and use the result as a VM template.

Community
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Michael Hampton
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  • Thanks for the tip!!! But how to get the second virtio hdd working? creating via virt-manager crashes the whole vm. Maybe because it isn't creating the disk in the LVM. – Swifty Nov 28 '12 at 04:29
  • Strange, maybe you've found a bug in virt-manager. Just add an existing disk, or a blank file, or something. – Michael Hampton Nov 28 '12 at 04:44
  • Tried with different methods. virt-manager, virsh edit... The vm always get's destroyed. I have no clue why. Even the logs gives no answers :( – Swifty Nov 28 '12 at 08:31
  • @Swifty I just ran through this with a fresh install and took a bunch of screenshots. Hope it helps you. – Michael Hampton Nov 28 '12 at 18:57
  • I can confirm that this works. Thanks for the detailed answer! Another way would be to load the VirtIO Drivers during Windows Install as mentioned there: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Windows_2012_guest_best_practices – Matthias Weiler Dec 17 '15 at 08:39
  • @MatthiasWeiler [Me too](http://serverfault.com/a/703676/126632). – Michael Hampton Dec 17 '15 at 15:09
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In Virtualizor, if you edit the vps and goto advanced options you can see secondary iso option.

Attach virtio disk there and windows iso as primary iso.

Boot the vps again and start windows installation, when you reach the disk management part, click on install drivers and there you can see the virtio driver disk. Install the driver and then you will be able to install windows to virtio disk.

errorfetch
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