Windows VirtIO Drivers
Windows VirtIO Drivers
Contents
Introduction
Windows OS support
Driver ISOs
See also
Introduction
VirtIO Drivers are paravirtualized drivers for kvm/Linux (see http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Virtio). In short,
they enable direct (paravirtualized) access to devices and peripherals for virtual machines using them, instead of
slower, emulated, ones.
A quite extended explanation about VirtIO drivers can be found here http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library
/l-virtio.
Windows OS support
Windows does not have VirtIO drivers included. The Fedora project provides CD ISO images with compiled and
signed VirtIO drivers for Windows.
See
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/creating-windows-virtual-machines-using-virtio-drivers
/index.html
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers
The source code of those drivers can be found on Github. See https://github.com/virtio-win/kvm-guest-drivers-
windows
Driver ISOs
Each of the ISOs is labelled with a numeric release.
Older versions could still be useful when, as it happens, a Windows VM shows instability or incompatibility with
the latest drivers.
a web repository https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/
here you can find both stable (https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/stable-virti
o/virtio-win.iso) and latest (https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/latest-virtio/vi
rtio-win.iso) sets of drivers
In the iso there are several dirs, with subdir for each supported OS version (2k19, 2k16, 2k12, 2k12R2, 2k3, 2k8,
2k8R2, w7, w8, w8.1, w10):
Balloon
guest-agent
NetKVM
pvpanic
qemupciserial
qxl
qxldod
viorng
vioscsi
vioserial
viostor
See also
Windows_VirtIO_Drivers/Changelog
Paravirtualized Block Drivers for Windows
Paravirtualized Network Drivers for Windows
Dynamic Memory Management