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Windows Machines

Guest Installation​

CAREFULLY WRITTEN AND CAREFULLY CHECKED

Ordinary users who are taking a leap of faith are being rewarded

I was trying to make a windows 11 VM on my fedora host. After lots of headache with qemu, quickemu, virtmanager etc, I finally found this which worked for me. Thank you. @YehiaEhab17 - issue #11

More stars hopefully to come

  • Any qqX builds will still run using Quickemu and you can always go back to Quickemu/QuickGUI

windows-insider-sdl-1920

TL ; DR​

For Windows VM's using older qqX versions 1.12 and 1.13

  • MAKE SURE to follow up the installation by running virtio-win-gt-x64.msi which is on the virtio ISO, from inside Windows

  • MAKE SURE Windows finds the initial drivers by following the pictures in the installer section

  • Install the Virtio guest tools which are also on the ISO.

  • Do NOT download the Spice guest tools as they are out of date.

From qqX 1.14 (early Oct 2025) onwards:

  • the needed drivers and agents will ALL auto-install and everthing should already be in place

  • you only need to read the sections on TPM, Secure Boot and on Hardware records

Now downloadable for testing from the dev branch

Creating Windows Virtual Machines is fairly straightforward but there are some quirks to pay attention to:

TPM & Secure Boot​

If you haven't installed swtpm then see the tpm notes

Secure Boot is controlled by the .conf file and should normally be set to 'off'.

However, early 2025 insider betas are now showing this needs to be set to 'on' and early tests are showing seemingly successful outcomes from the secure boot check routine.

That said, this particular update in question fails to follow through on the boot level section. Possibly due to a number reasons, including that the 'beta' software itself, which introduces WiFi-7, in fact has problems of its own ...

win-insider- sb-upd

The making of between stage snapshots is recommended.

Downloader​

qqX still offers Windows downloads that are not available upstream. Quickemu changes to the 'editions' code in early 2025 did help but they are not complete.

Version 1.12 introduced download resuming. This will work with Microsoft and can be very useful if you have an poor internet connection. You will are only allowed one (or two?) resumes per time-out session but you should still be able to eventually download everything.

win-dl-select

windows dl qqX

Installer​

qqX has an option to check and view the Qemu 'invocation' before booting, as shown in following picture

  • use the [v] option from the main menu to set 'verbose mode'

Quickemu will send a key press signal, via socket sendkey, to trigger the CD 'press any key' request.

The first dialog screen that you see should ask you to confirm a language:

win-install-lang

  • MAKE SURE to follow up the installation by running virtio-win-gt-x64.msi which is on the virtio ISO, from inside Windows

From qqX 1.14 onwards, this following steps should become automated.

For qqX 1.12 and 1.13, you will be taken to an installer 'location' screen where will need to click on the blue 'find hardware' text link:

win-hw-select

Click on 'Browse' and select the Virtio DVD

win browse virtio

Select amd64 and w11, or as appropriate

win browse select this

Click on the driver. In this screenshot 'viostor.inf' and then click install.

win browse select this

Everything should then proceed:

win-okay

The other CDROM/DVD (ISO) will contain the spice guest msi's which should have been automatically installed.

spice-msi

For Windows guests:

For qqX 1.12 and 1.13, the basic tools should normally have been installed via the automated unattended.iso

  • MAKE SURE to have followed up the installation by running virtio-win-gt-x64.msi which is on the virtio ISO

  • The additional SPICE guest tools are OUT OF DATE and should NOT be used

  • Use the additional Virtio guest tools, which are on the ISO

virtio-win-drivers-and-agents

From qqX 1.14 onwards, the needed drivers and agents will ALL auto-install and everthing should already be in place

  • You may have to adjust the display settings for size and scaling ratio.

See the qqX docs for Notes on Shared Drives and qqX exclusive sharing features

Host Problems​

Distros using Apparmor​

  • For swtpm: Could not open UnixIO socket: Permission denied, see the tpm notes

Mkisofs​

The Quickemu installer uses mkisofs to build a Spice msi ISO. See the general qqX installation notes and the Spice Website if this is causing problems.

Or, as a retro-fix, try

mkisofs -J -R -input-charset utf-8 -o "unattended.iso" "unattended/"

from a terminal opened in the Windows VM folder.

Guest Virtual Hardware​

Remember that Windows is proprietary software and has copy controls.

The hard metal rules still apply. If too much hardware changes at once, then Windows will not load.

qqX will record the virtual hardware that Windows uses in a log file, in case you need it. The record can be upated via the utils menu, if you make any big changes.

In case of lock-out, the easiest path is to apply an older snapshot but you can also use the hardware record as the basis of a custom boot file.