In your VM manager (like Virt-Manager or Proxmox), set the hard disk bus to VirtIO and the network device model to VirtIO .

# On the host, locate the installer mount virtio-win.iso /mnt # Inside Windows, run /mnt/virtio-win-gt-x64.msi

When the Windows 8.1 installer boots up, navigate through the initial language and region screens, click , and enter your product key.

Follow the prompts to install all recommended drivers, including the (network) driver and the QXOD (graphics display) driver.

At the drive selection screen, the space will appear empty. Windows cannot see the QCOW2 drive yet. Click in the bottom left corner. Click Browse in the pop-up window.

Note: This creates a dynamically expanding 40 GB virtual disk named windows81.qcow2 . Step 2: Download the VirtIO Drivers

QEMU (Quick Emulator) is an open-source emulator that allows you to run virtual machines on a variety of host operating systems. It's a powerful tool that can emulate a wide range of architectures, including x86, ARM, and PowerPC.

Use virt-manager or add --cdrom virtio-win.iso to your QEMU command line.

However, for actually creating a .qcow2 image and then installing Windows into it, you'll first need to create the image:

From a VMDK (VMware):

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