When the Windows Setup Wizard prompts you to select an installation disk, the drive list will appear completely empty. This happens because Windows does not natively include the virtio-blk or viostor storage drivers. Click in the lower-left corner.
To get the best possible performance from your Windows 10 VM, you should pay close attention to how you configure and interact with your .qcow2 image.
Mastering the use of a configuration bridges the gap between enterprise Windows application infrastructure and the cost-saving performance of modern Linux cloud hypervisors. Windows 10.qcow2
The Complete Guide to Windows 10 .qcow2 Virtual Disk Images Unlike standard .iso installer files or fixed .raw disk images, a .qcow2 (QEMU Copy-On-Write version 2) format optimizes storage efficiency and streamlines virtual machine (VM) deployments across Linux systems, cloud ecosystems, and type-1 hypervisors like Proxmox VE .
Open your Linux terminal and use the qemu-img utility to generate a virtual disk. We recommend allocating at least 40 GB to 60 GB for a usable Windows 10 environment: qemu-img create -f qcow2 windows10.qcow2 60G Use code with caution. When the Windows Setup Wizard prompts you to
This guide will use the command line, as it is universal across all Linux distributions. For those who prefer a graphical interface, the steps are almost identical using virt-manager (Virtual Machine Manager).
Open inside the VM and access the VirtIO CD-ROM drive. Launch the virtio-win-gt-x64.msi installer package. To get the best possible performance from your
Because Microsoft does not officially distribute pre-built Windows 10 images in the QCOW2 format, you must build one yourself using a Windows 10 ISO and Red Hat’s . Without VirtIO drivers, KVM/QEMU cannot recognize the virtual storage controller or network adapter during installation. Prerequisites
Convert your Windows 10.qcow2 to use VirtIO block devices. Edit the VM XML (via virsh edit vm-name ) or in Virt-Manager:
# Connect to monitor (Ctrl+Alt+2) savevm snapshot_name