In this post we shall perform the installation of VirtIO Drivers on Windows 11 or Windows Server 2022. This procedure is applicable to older versions of Windows Desktop or Windows server with Desktop experience. VirtIO Drivers for KVM enables direct access (paravirtualized) to devices and peripherals for virtual machines using them on the host system. This has better performance over emulated device access which tend to be slower.
Installation of virtio drivers on a guest virtual machine can be done with either of the following methods:
- Using a virtualized CD-ROM device of the driver installation disk .iso file
- With installation files hosted on a network accessible to the virtual machine
- With a USB drive, where the .ISO file is is mounted similar to the use for the CD-ROM
- Using a virtualized floppy device to install the drivers during boot time (required and recommended only for XP/2003)
Using virtio-win package (RHEL based systems)
Installation from .ISO file is more generic and suitable for different applications. On RHEL based virtualization hypervisors, the virtio-win package contains the virtio block and network drivers for all supported Windows guest virtual machines.
sudo yum install virtio-winThis package will install a CD-ROM image in the /usr/share/virtio-win/virtio-win.iso path. This can then be attached to the guest OS and installation performed.
Downloading VirtIO Drivers ISO
You can download the latest VirtIO Drivers stable or the most recent build of the ISO.
## Latest build ###
wget https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/latest-virtio/virtio-win.iso
## Stable release ###
wget https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/stable-virtio/virtio-win.isoMove the ISO file to the images path on your hypervisor.
### KVM ###
sudo mv virtio-win.iso /var/lib/libvirt/images
### Proxmox ###
sudo mv virtio-win.iso /var/lib/vz/template/iso/On Proxmox you can also download the ISO to storage domain directly.
Wait for the few download to finish executing. The file will be visible under ISO images directory.
Add “CD/DVD Drive” device to the VM instance.
Attach ISO image by selecting “virtio-win-iso” file. This will mount the ISO with a virtual CD-ROM/DVD drive on that VM.
Check if it was attached successfully.
Login to your Windows instance and open Windows Explorer, then navigate to the CD-ROM drive.
Install the drivers by double-clicking on virtio-win-gt-x64 to execute it.
Follow the installation instructions to complete the process.
Click Next to use default features.
Hit “Install” to initiate installation process of he VirtIO drivers on your Ubuntu system.
If successful the “Finish” page is presented to you.
Install QEMU Guest Agent
Double-click on “virtio-win-guest-tools” exe file to execute and begin the installation of QEMU Guest Agent and the SPICE agent for an improved remote-viewer experience.
Accept installation to proceed.
Wait for the process to comlete.
When done “stop” and “start” the virtual machine
If the Virtual Machine has internet access, you can as well download the most recent virtio-win-gt-x64.msi or virtio-win-gt-x86.msi inside the Virtual Machine and begin the installations.
