How To PROPERLY Install Windows 11 on KVM (2024)

if you want to run Microsoft Windows 11 as a guest virtual machine on KVM you must take some additional steps to ensure that everything runs smoothly so in this video I'll show you how to properly install a Windows 11 virtual machine on kbm I'll show you what virtual Hardware you need to set up I will show you how to install verdio drivers while installing Windows 11 how to install Windows guess tools once the installation is finished how to enable Hardware security in Windows 11 and finally I will show you how to optimize Windows 11 performance but before you start ensure that you've met the following requirements you have installed the KVM hypervisor on your computer if not check out my other video how to properly install KVM on Linux you have installed or downloaded the vert iio drivers for Windows guest on your host computer if not please do I have covered this in the same video I just suggested you so please watch that video and you have downloaded the official Windows 11 installation ISO image I'll include all links in the description so let's begin start the virtual machine Manager application before you begin creating a Windows 11 guest virtual machine you must first enable XML editing um you will be adding some xnl components later in this video click the computer icon to launch the wizard this wizard will walk you through the process of setting up a new virtual machine in five easy steps in Step One select the local install media option in step two choose the windows 11 ISO installer image step three involves configuring memory and CPU the minimum RAM required to install Windows 11 is 4 gabt I'll just keep the default 8 gigabyte as for the CP CPU I only have four so I'll set it to two CPUs here you must specify how much disk space you need for Windows 11 the requirement is 64 gigs or more I'll keep the default of 128 gigs in the final step assign a name to the virtual machine I'll give it the name Windows 11 also make sure to check the box customize configuration before install uh finally click the Finish button to complete the wizard and move on to the advanced options make sure the chipset is set to Q35 the Q35 chipset natively supports pcie and provides pcie improved pass through Support also ensure that the firmware is set to UEFI this enables secure boot which is required by Windows 11 next click the XML tab uh you need to enable the hyperb enlightenments hyperv enlightenments allow kbm to emulate the Microsoft hyperv hypervisor and this improves the uh performance of the windows 11 virtual machine to enable it go to my post on the same subject I'll add the link to this post in the description and then copy the XML text and replace the the hyperv XML block here also if you have a andd processor um you cannot use this feature this vmcs feature is only available on Intel platforms so you must remove this line for hyperv enlightenments to work properly on AMD processors also ensure that the timer hyperv clock is set to Yes um click the apply button go to CPU ensure the CPU configuration is set to host pass through when the mode is set to host pass through the host CPUs model in features are exactly passed on to the guest virtual machine this causes the virtual machine to run close to the host native speed um this is the recommended and default option as well next go to the disk set the dis bus to vert iio the vert isle is preferred over other emulated storage controllers as it is specifically designed and optimize for virtualization set the cache mode to none in this mode the host page cache is bypassed and output occurs directly between the hypervisor user space buffers and the storage device in terms of performance it is equivalent to direct disk access on your host set the discard node to unmap when you delete files in the guest virtual machine the changes are reflected immediately in the guest file system the qa2 dis image associated with the VM on the host however does not shrink to reflect the newly freed space when you set the discard mode to unmap the qcow2 dis image will automatically shrink to reflect the newly freed space because you selected vert iio as the dis bus for your virtual dis you must install vert IO drivers during Windows installation as the first cdrom is used for the installation ISO you'll need to add a second CD Ron to mount the vert IO win ISO so click the add Hardware button then in the storage select cdrom device browse to user share and vert IO win select the vert iio win ISO file the second CD Ron has now been added next go to network interface change the device model to vert IO the network vert iio driver is specifically designed and optimized for virtualization as a result there will be no processing overhead and the performance of the guest virtual machine will naturally improve in a Windows Virtual Machine uh removing the USB tablet device can reduce idle CPU um usage and context switches as a result the performance of the windows 11 virtual machine will improve KVM uses certain Communication channel devices to connect the guest and host machine spice vmc is a paravirtualized spice channel that is used by KVM to communicate with the spice display server similarly if you want to communicate with a guest from The Host you must add the guest agent channel so click the add Hardware button to open the add new virtual Hardware window now select Channel then from the dropdown list select guest agent click the Finish button to apply next go to video select the qxl model it is the preferred model for Windows finally enable TPM Windows 11 requires TPM version 2.0 um all of the virtual hardware and settings needed to install Microsoft Windows 11 have been configured to begin the installation of Windows 11 click the begin installation button choose your language time and currency format and keyboard I will keep the defaults and click next to continue click the install now button if you have a product key enterate here to activate Windows 11 otherwise choose I don't have a product key option choose the windows version you want to install I'll be installing Windows 11 home for this tutorial accept the license terms you are given two options here uh since we are doing a new installation choose the second option you must now select the dis on which Windows 11 will be installed but as you can see the installer was unable to find any diss uh this is because we chose the vert IO dis bus when setting up Windows 11 virtual Hardware so you must manually install the vert IO drivers click on the load driver option browse expand the second CD drive expand vo store expand w11 and select amd64 click next to install as you can see the dis is now visible but don't proceed with the installation just yet you still have to install the vert iio Network driver so repeat the same process but this time expand net KDM and then install net KVM driver now that both drivers have been installed click the next button to continue the installation the next install ation steps are all about personalization um so complete the installation according to your needs and once completed I will proceed from there Windows 11 installation is now complete you now need to install ver IO Windows guest tools the guest tools include some optional drivers and services that boost spice performance and integration this includes both the qxl video driver and the spice guest agent which provides copy and paste automatic resolution switching and other features so launch the file manager navigate to the CD drive and double click on the uh guest tools pack package to install it after installing the guest tools in the windows 11 kbm window select view stale display and enable the auto resize option this will enable uh the windows 11 guest window to automatically scale uh as you resize it um as you can see the window scales automatically when you resize it now that you've installed desk tools you don't need the second CD ROM drive so shut down Windows 11 click on Virtual Hardware unmount the ISO file and remove the CD Drive um you also don't need the windows 11 installer ISO so unmount it as well start the windows 11 virtual machine next you need to enable Hardware security on Windows 11 uh with the Q35 chipset selected secure Boot and TPM 2.0 enabled and the latest whql certified verdio drivers installed your windows 11 guest virtual machine already has Standard Security you can check if your virtual machine passes Standard Security by opening the device security page to access the device security page navigate to settings privacy and security Windows security and device security as you can see here it says your virtual machine already has standard Hardware security so no issue here to make Windows 11 guest virtual machine even more secure you can enable core isolation core isolation provides additional protection against malware and other attacks um by isolating computer processes from your operating system and device uh memory Integrity is a feature of core isolation by enabling the memory Integrity setting you can help prevent malicious code from accessing high security processes during an attack but before attempting to enable this feature ensure that your processor supports it to check if if your processor supports this feature go to this page and see if your processor is listed I will add the link to this page in the description if your processor isn't listed here uh skip this section and move on to the next one which is optimizing Windows 11 performance to enable this feature first shut down Windows 11 open the virtual Hardware Details page then click the overview option on the left panel and the XML tab on the right scroll down to CPU section and enable the vmx feature if you are using an AMD processor replace vmx with the sdn policy flag this feature however is not available to me because I am using an old fourth generation Intel processor if your processor supports um then keep this policy save it and start the virtual machine I will however remove this policy because it does not work for me once Windows 11 has booted uh return to the core isolation Details page uh toggle the the memory Integrity switch you will then be prompted to restart restart Windows 11 after restart check your devices security level once more you should now have a Windows 11 running with enhanced Hardware security configuring or disabling certain Windows features in Windows 11 can help improve performance I will provide some suggestions to improve improve performance but it's up to you to implement them or not SuperFetch is a standard Windows feature that preloads the apps you use the most frequently although SuperFetch is useful it consumes a significant amount of CPU and RAM as a background service to disable SuperFetch type services uh into the search box and uh click on services in the services window look for CIS main right click it and and select properties then disable the service SuperFetch is now disabled next you need to disable windows web search when you search search for something in the windows search box or start menu uh Windows may take a few seconds to retrieve your search results and a list of suggested web results from Bing although this is a useful feature you may dislike it and wish to disable it to disable web results on Windows 11 open the registry editor browse to current user software policies Microsoft rightclick the windows T select new and then select the key option enter Explorer as the key name and press enter now right click on the newly created Explorer key select new and then the dword 32bit name the dword disable searchbox suggestions and press enter double click the newly created dword um and change its value from 0er to one close the registry editor window and restart your computer uh you will now have fast loading search results that do not retrieve results from the web next you need to disable platform clock when the hyperv extensions are enabled using the platform clock leads to poor performance as a result you need to disable this feature so open the terminal as an administrator and type this command and then press enter next disable any unnecessary scheduled tasks uh to see a list of all scheduled tasks run this command in the terminal I'm only going to disable the scheduled defrag task uh it is entirely up to you which other schedule tasks you wish to disable to disable run this command and the scheduled defrag task has now been disabled when you start Windows 11 uh some programs launch automatically and run in the background you can disable these programs so that they do not start when Windows boots up to stop a program from starting automatically go to settings apps startup and then turn off all programs that you don't need or use frequently finally you must adjust the visual effects in Windows 11 many visual effects such as animations and shadow effects are included in Windows 11 uh these are visually appealing but they can take up extra system resources and slow down your computer to disable visual effects in Windows type performance in the search box and then uh select adjust the appearance from the list of results now select the option adjust for best performance and click apply uh installing a Windows 11 virtual machine on kbm and optimizing it for performance is now complete um thank you for watching this video and staying until the end see you in the next video Until then goodbye

Channel: SysGuides

Views: 11,123

Keywords: Microsoft Windows 11, KVM Hypervisor, Windows guest tools, VirtIO Drivers for Windows, Hyper-V Enlightenments, CPU Host-Passthrough, QEMU Guest Agent, Enable Trusted Platform Module (TPM), Hardware Security on Windows 11

Id: 7tqKBy9r9b4

Length: 31min 1sec (1861 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 23 2024