…bundled as ISO images, so that you can easily mount and use them in a KVM guest.
UPDATE: It seems that Fedora started to provide the latest drivers bundled as an ISO. Check the official Windows VirtIO Drivers page for links.
Download locations follow:
- Both Virtio network and storage drivers for Windows (4.0M)
- Virtio network drivers for Windows (2.8M)
- Virtio storage drivers for Windows (1.6M)
These are static ISO images, and I’ve built them by downloading the ZIP sources dated 24.09.2009 from the official WindowsGuestDrivers KVM page and then converting them to ISO image files by using K3b.
Note that Virtio provides noticeably faster disk and network access.
Please review the official page of Virtio for sample KVM command line arguments which set up Virtio storage and network devices. You may notice that there is an (undocumented) parameter “boot=on” specified for the “-drive” option. This “boot=on” parameter is vital for the “-drive” option, or else Windows 7 won’t like your drive and won’t install on it.
Note about Virtio storage drives and the Windows 7 installer
I was able to install Windows 7 right from the start by using a Virtio storage drive within the KVM guest. At first the Windows installer didn’t see the Virtio disk at all but there is an option to install additional storage drivers. I installed the Virtio Windows drivers from the above ISO images, the Windows installer detected the Virtio storage disk properly and everything went quite smooth afterwards.
Resources:
- Preview of Redhat 5.4 Windows Virtio Drivers Part 1
- Official WindowsGuestDrivers KVM page. The drivers are provided by the RedHat folks.
- Comprehensive information about KVM and the DOS/Windows family. In German, but you may try Google translate to read it if you don’t read German well.
/contrib/famzah 