How to install Windows 8 in QEMU: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:45, 17 May 2022

Windows 8 is an operating system created by Microsoft, released in 2012. There is an updated version of Windows 8 called Windows 8.1. We recommend 8.1, but this guide will work for plain 8 as well.

Running on CollabVM

Windows 8/8.1 works pretty well. VM 4 is running Windows 8.1.

However, Windows 8/8.1 is very slow without virtualization, so if you don't have root/KVM/Xen, speeds will not be optimal.

Recommended version: Windows 8.1 Update 1

Starting up

QEMU

Pre-installation

Make a qcow2 image (or a raw image if you want) by typing

qemu-img create -f qcow2 win8.img 40G

Windows 8 requires some disk space, you can make this 20 gigabytes if you want but it is recommended to have at least 40 GB for users to install programs onto.

When that's done, run the following command:

qemu-system-x86_64 -hda win8.img -cdrom win8_iso_name.iso -boot d -enable-kvm -cpu host -m 2G -vga std -net nic,model=e1000 -net user -usbdevice tablet -localtime

Or if running without root or virtualization:

qemu-system-x86_64 -hda win8.img -cdrom win8_iso_name.iso -boot d -cpu qemu64 -m 2G -vga std -net nic,model=e1000 -net user -usbdevice tablet -localtime

2 gigabytes of memory is highly recommended for optimal performance, but like Windows 7 the 32-bit version can run on 512 MB of RAM (that's not recommended if you want to run programs, though.) The absolute minimum is 1 GB.

You'll also want to uninstall unnecessary applications and disable Windows Defender. This is because Windows Defender takes up large amounts of CPU on QEMU which makes the VM very slow.

After installation

qemu-system-x86_64 -hda win8.img -boot c -enable-kvm -cpu host -m 2G -vga std -net nic,model=e1000 -net user -usbdevice tablet -localtime