Qemu uefi windows 10

It is actually quite easy to boot Windows virtualized using KVM. But to properly use the UEFI bootloader, suitable QEMU arguments are required. Here is a lightly commented QEMU command I use to boot virtual Windows 10 I have on a separate partition.

sudo qemu-system-x86_64 --enable-kvm -cpu host -m 2048 \
-smp 4,sockets=1,cores=2,threads=2 -mem-path /dev/hugepages \
-vga qxl -display none -serial mon:stdio \
-rtc clock=host,base=localtime \
-device qemu-xhci,id=xhci \
-device virtio-tablet,wheel-axis=true \
-soundhw ac97 \
-netdev user,id=vmnic,smb=/ \
-device virtio-net,netdev=vmnic \
-drive file=/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_CODE.fd,if=pflash,format=raw,unit=0,readonly=on \
-drive file=$HOME/.config/qemu-windows.nvram,if=pflash,format=raw,unit=1 \
-drive file=/dev/sdb,index=0,media=disk,driver=raw \
-cdrom /opt/UefiShell.iso


For now I use sudo, because QEMU needs to access raw partitions from /dev/sdb. The other, maybe better way would be assigning a group to /dev/sdb, setting up proper group permissions and adding me to that group.

-m 2048 -smp 4,sockets=1,cores=2,threads=2 says to allocate 2GB of RAM for the guest and use CPU threads (1 CPU socket, with 2 cores, each core having 2 threads).

-mem-path /dev/hugepages is better described in Arch wiki.

-display sdl -vga qxl Use SDL for rendering and window management in the host and QXL GPU device in the guest (there are QXL drivers for Windows).

-device qemu-xhci,id=xhci Enable USB3 support by emulating an XHCI controller

-device virtio-tablet,wheel-axis=true Emulate a tablet pointing device with mouse scroll support

-soundhw ac97 Emulate ac97. You can then use Realtek driver. It worked better in QEMU than Intel hda for me.

netdev stuff Is for setting up network interface

-drive file=/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_CODE.fd,if=pflash,format=raw,unit=0,readonly=on This is a very important part. It loads OVMF UEFI firmware read-only as the first Flash device. This firmware implements a UEFI bios and allows running UEFI Shell or booting .efi bootloader for Windows (bootmgfw.efi). This OVMF can be downloaded directly from the OVMF project repo or if you are using Arch Linux, just install ovmf package.

-drive file=$HOME/.config/qemu-windows.nvram,if=pflash,format=raw,unit=1 this loads a read-write NVRam flash image as the second virtual flash chip. OVMF firmware uses this to store UEFI variables, .efi boot order, etc. The default image can be copied from the OVMF setup (at /usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_VARS.fd in ovmf Arch linux package). It must be a writable copy.

-drive file=/dev/sdb,index=0,media=disk,driver=raw Attaches my raw sdb block device to the virtual machine. That is used as a HDD for the guest, it has Windows pre-installed there together with EFI partition.

-cdrom /opt/UefiShell.iso UEFI shell iso as a CDROM. Before OVMF nvram is properly configured to boot Windows by default, this will result in booting into the EFI shell which allows to run .efi executables manually. Windows can be run by just navigating into the EFI partition and running the Windows efi loader – blkX:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi.

I don’t know how to force Windows to write UEFI boot order. There doesn’t seem to be a tool like efibootmgr on Windows. It would set the UEFI boot order up randomly during Windows Updates (mostly when you don’t want it to touch your EFI setup). If TianoCore fails to find your Windows installation, you can try pressing ESC during TianoCore EFI boot to get to boot menu. Or you can always boot Linux using the -cdrom command and use efibootmgr to force the OVMF to boot the Windows loader entry for this virtual machine by default. Usage of the efibootmgr command is out of scope of this article and can be found in many online resources elsewhere.

You can even use SPICE to connect to the booted VM remotely. To do that, add these options:

-spice port=5900,addr=127.0.0.1,disable-ticketing -device virtserialport,chardev=spicechannel0,name=com.redhat.spice.0 -chardev spicevmc,id=spicechannel0,name=vdagent \
-chardev spicevmc,name=usbredir,id=usbredirchardev1 -device usb-redir,chardev=usbredirchardev1,id=usbredirdev1 \
-chardev spicevmc,name=usbredir,id=usbredirchardev2 -device usb-redir,chardev=usbredirchardev2,id=usbredirdev2 \
-chardev spicevmc,name=usbredir,id=usbredirchardev3 -device usb-redir,chardev=usbredirchardev3,id=usbredirdev3 \

It says to listen on port 5900 (localhost-only), adds SPICE channel between host and guest (to allow remote copy-paste) and 4 remotelly-attachable USB devices.

You can then use SPICE client like remote-viewer to connect to the VM. If the original local VM graphical output is not needed, add -display none parameter.

Have fun with virtualized Windows and remember – Windows is good for games only and for stuff like government PDFs which use proprietary Adobe XFA forms and are therefore supported in official Adobe Reader which has the best support in this platform only. Windows definitely shouldn’t be used on servers or anything serious! By default it is very limited (maximum number or RAM, maximum number of CPU cores, maximum number of listening socket connections, etc) until you pay huge amounts of money to Microsoft. Wise people use Linux and lazy people who don’t care about privacy or freedom use Mac OS X.

This article describes the setup of a Windows guest using QEMU.

Configuration

Host

To create a disk image for the virtual machine, run:

Tip
Consider allocating more space if you are aiming for newer Windows versions as e.g. Win 10 Pro 22H2 after fresh install already occupies 20G. You may extend disk images easily by qemu-img resize later on, but as Windows rescue partition is located at the end of the disk this needs further steps.

Download a Windows driver image from this location.

Since QEMU requires a lot of options, it would be a good idea to put them into a shell script, e.g.:

FILE WindowsVM.sh

#!/bin/sh
exec qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm \
        -cpu host \
        -drive file=WindowsVM.img,if=virtio \
        -net nic -net user,hostname=windowsvm \
        -m 1G \
        -monitor stdio \
        -name "Windows" \
        "$@"

Change the path to the disk image WindowsVM.img in the script. Additional options can be used when calling the script. To boot the disk image, run:

Install the Windows guest. See the guest section for optimum support. After the installation start the script without the additional options.

Note
When upgrading to QEMU 1.3 the -enable-kvm must be added to keep the guest responsive. Also change -net nic to -net nic,model=rtl8139 to have a network interface in the guest.

Note
When upgrading to QEMU 1.5.3, add -display sdl,frame=off,window_close=off" to keep a full screen session full screen. Without this option there may be a (new) menu bar at the top of the screen, pushing the Windows bottom menu off screen.

Note
When upgrading to QEMU 2.0.0 replace qemu-kvm with qemu-system-<CPUTYPE> (e.g. qemu-system-x86_64) (-enable-kvm switch may need to be added); the qemu-kvm wrapper has been removed — see bug #506566

Note
German (and perhaps other) localized Windows versions likely are not able to setup any virtual network card properly on QEMU >=6.0 due to a problem in Windows — see QEMU issue #774

Guest

• During installation at the partition step Windows doesn’t detect the VirtIO hard drive. Windows will require the viostor driver from the driver image listed above.
• After installation the VirtIO Ethernet adapter will appear without a driver. Windows will require the netkvm driver from the driver image listed above.

• For 32-bit Windows 7 a sound driver for the Intel 82801AA AC97 exists.

• For 64-bit Windows 7 Intel HDA is available as an option (QEMU option: -soundhw hda)
• Windows 10 guest audio emulation is tricky for ALSA users. Pass these options to QEMU:-audiodev alsa,id=snd0,out.try-poll=off -device ich9-intel-hda -device hda-output,audiodev=snd0
  • This assumes use of the default ALSA device for playback.
  • we cannot use AC97 for Windows 10 because there is no driver for it.
  • out.try-poll=off is an odd option, but without it I got nothing but clicks and pops during playback.
  • there may be more options required for line-in and line-out (-device hda-duplex) or microphone and line-out (-device hda-micro).
  • For PulseAudio, see ArchWiki

• USB 2.0 pass through can be configured from host to guest with variations of: -usb -device usb-ehci,id=ehci -device usb-host,bus=ehci.0,vendorid=1452

• For Windows 8.1 USB tablet is available only with USB 2.0 pass through (QEMU option: -device usb-ehci,id=ehci -device usb-tablet,bus=ehci.0
  • The USB tablet device helps the Windows guest to accurately track mouse movements. Without it mouse movements will be jerky.
• Another device that can be presented to the Windows guest is the random number generator. Add QEMU option: -device virtio-rng-pci . Now install the viorng driver from the driver image.
• For Windows 10, to boot using UEFI the sys-firmware/edk2-ovmf is required on the host, then add QEMU option: -bios /usr/share/edk2-ovmf/OVMF_CODE.fd. to the qemu call. This option is essential for running Hyper-V guest images.

SPICE

QEMU with SPICE support enables (among other things) the more powerful QXL display device and makes clipboard sharing possible (copy/paste between clients and the virtual machine).

To use SPICE with QEMU enable the following USE flag in package.use:

FILE /etc/portage/package.useSetting USE variable

Build QEMU:

To connect spice server, a client like net-misc/spice-gtk is required.

Guest

On Windows guests, install Windows guest tools.

On Windows 8.1 guest, to set screen resolution more than 1024×768, install drivers from https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Windows_Virtio_Drivers#Direct_download and QXL WDDM DOD driver. If trying to install Windows guest tool, QXL WDDM DOD driver won’t work well because of Windows SPICE agent .

To try the new qlx-dod driver linked above, in order to use the driver, update’ the basic windows display adapter driver and point it to the unzipped folder for the new driver. This can be found by: Right click the Start button -> Device Manager. Expand ‘Display adapters’ and right click on the sub entry and hit update driver.

Initialization script

To run QEMU from a script (the spicy viewer requires net-misc/spice-gtk):

FILE WindowsVM.sh

#!/bin/sh
SPICE_PORT=5924
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -daemonize \
    -cpu host \
    -drive file=WindowsVM.img,if=virtio \
    -net nic -net user,hostname=windowsvm \
    -m 1G \
    -vga qxl \
    -spice port=${SPICE_PORT},disable-ticketing=on \
    -usbdevice tablet \
    -device virtio-serial \
    -chardev spicevmc,id=vdagent,name=vdagent \
    -device virtserialport,chardev=vdagent,name=com.redhat.spice.0 \
    "$@"
exec spicy --title Windows 127.0.0.1 -p ${SPICE_PORT}

Or remote-viewer (app-emulation/virt-viewer):

FILE WindowsVM.sh

#!/bin/sh
SPICE_PORT=5924
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -daemonize \
    -cpu host \
    -drive file=WindowsVM.img,if=virtio \
    -net nic -net user,hostname=windowsvm \
    -m 1G \
    -vga qxl \
    -spice port=${SPICE_PORT},disable-ticketing=on \
    -usbdevice tablet \
    -device virtio-serial \
    -chardev spicevmc,id=vdagent,name=vdagent \
    -device virtserialport,chardev=vdagent,name=com.redhat.spice.0 \
    "$@"
exec remote-viewer --title Windows spice://127.0.0.1:${SPICE_PORT}

1. Download and install QEMU 4.2.0 for Windows.
32-bit version
64-bit version

2. Download Linaro UEFI 15.10 32-bit and copy this file to the QEMU installation folder.

3. Download HxD Hex Editor.

4. Patch trustzone, for this open qemu-system-arm.exe in the HxD Hex Editor and replace the following hex string: 4531C931D24C8D05BE515C004889F1E87AD82E00 with: 9090909090909090909090909090909090909090.

5. Download and install GTK2-Runtime 2.14.4-2008-10-22.

6. Download ARM32 build of viostor driver.

7. Add viostor driver to the install.wim. Extract viostor_arm32.7z archive, then run Command Prompt as administrator and then run the following commands:

dism /mount-image /imagefile:\WIM\file\path /mountdir:\WIM\mount\path /index:1
dism /image:\WIM\mount\path /add-driver /driver:\path\to\viostor.inf
dism /unmount-image /mountdir:\WIM\mount\path /commit

8. Create needed VHD files by using the diskpart utility. For this, run the following commands. (Note that these files will be created in a directory on your C drive called «15035», and they will be mounted under the drive letters P and W).

create vdisk file="C:\15035\hdd.vhd" maximum=40000 type=expandable
select vdisk file="C:\15035\hdd.vhd"
attach vdisk
convert gpt
create partition efi size=100
format quick fs=fat32
assign letter=p
create partition primary
format quick
assign letter=w
exit

9. Apply the install.wim to VHD, and then create boot files:

dism /apply-image /imagefile:<WIM file path> /index:1 /applydir:W:\
bcdboot W:\Windows /s P: /f UEFI

After that, eject P or W. Once ejected, P remains and disappears after a reboot.

10. Run QEMU by going to your QEMU installation folder, saving the following text to a batch file, and then running it to start the emulator:

qemu-system-arm -M virt,highmem=false -cpu cortex-a15 -smp 2 -accel tcg,thread=multi -m 2048 -bios QEMU_EFI.fd -drive if=virtio,file=C:\15035\hdd.vhd,format=vpc -device VGA -device ich9-usb-ehci1 -device usb-kbd -device usb-tablet -rtc base=2017-02-09,clock=vm

11. If you want to change screen resolution press F2 to enter EFI settings, enter Device Manager and then OVMF Platform Configuration. Change the resolution to the desired one then commit the changes and exit. Choose Machine in the QEMU menu and then reset the emulator.

12. Select EFI Internal Shell. Enter a drive letter (such as FS0:) in the shell and run the following command:

efi\boot\bootarm.efi

(The above commands allow you to start the OOBE).

During the first launch, error 0xc00000428 is possible. You must disable driver signature enforcement. To do this, press the F8 key and then press the 4 key.

13. Set testsigning on.

To do this press Shift + F10, then the command line will appear. Enter the following command:

bcdedit -set testsigning on

After the completion of the OOBE, you can boot into the system.

14. If OOBE fails.

If OOBE fails, then you must follow the steps below to bypass it and log in:

a. On the first screen of OOBE, press Shift + F10, a command prompt will appear.

b. Enter the regedit command, then you will open the Registry Editor.

c. Go to the following path: \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup.

d. Change the value of the CmdLine parameter from oobe/windeploy.exe to cmd.exe.

e. Change the value of the OOBEInProgress parameter from 1 to 0.

f. Change the value of the SetupPhase parameter from 4 to 1.

g. Close Registry Editor and at the command prompt type the following command: shutdown /r /t 00 to reboot.

h. Now, if you did everything right, when you boot, you should automatically have a command line. You need to manually create an administrator account and delete the defaultuser0 account. To do this, run the following commands:

net user Administrator /active:yes
net user defaultuser0 /delete

i. After that, launch the Task Manager. To do this, in the command line, enter the taskmgr command. Then end the winlogon.exe process.