Windows VirtIO Drivers

Introduction

VirtIO Drivers are paravirtualized drivers for kvm/Linux (see http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Virtio).

A quite extended explanation can be found here http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-virtio.

Recent Linux kernels already have those drivers so any distribution, running in a kvm VM, should recognize virtio devices exposed by the kvm hypervisor.

On the other side, All Windows OS need special drivers to use virtio devices. Microsoft does not provide them, so someone kindly managed to make virtio drivers available also for windows systems.

See

• http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers
• http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers

Following info on those page you can find:

• a git repository: https://github.com/YanVugenfirer/kvm-guest-drivers-windows

  this is the source for the Windows drivers and is hosted in a repository on GIT hub. Anonymous users can clone the repository

• a web repository http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/

  here you can find "packaged" sets of drivers

  • in source format (.zip)
  • in compiled format (.iso)

Packaged sets of drivers

Each of those "packaged" sets of drivers available is labelled with a numeric release, and differs by features & bugs as it improves through the time.

Most recent set is virtio-win-0.1-74, with updates to virtio drivers as of 16 Oct 2013.

Previous versions could still be useful when, as it happens, some Windows VM shows instability or imcompatibility with latest drivers set.

Based on the "status.txt" that can be found on each "packaged" sets of drivers, in the source format (.zip), this wiki hosts also a sort of "Changelog", since apparently it can't be found anywhere on the internet, to author knowledge.

see Windows_VirtIO_Drivers/Changelog