Tag Archives: Windows

VMs and LXCs

Windows Virtual Machines

One of our Homelab environment’s goals is to run our Windows desktop OSs on virtual machines. This enables us to get at standard OS environments such as Microsoft Windows easily from a web browser.

Windows Virtual Machine Setup

We use the following procedure to set up our Windows VMs –

The following ISO images are downloaded to the PVE-templates Share on our Proxmox cluster –

Each Windows VM is created with the following options (all other choices used the defaults) –

  • Name the VM windows-<macoine name>
  • Use the Windows 10 desktop ISO image.
  • Add an additional drive for the VirtIO drivers and use the Windows VirtIO Driver ISO image.
  • The Type/Version is set to Microsoft Windows 10.
  • Check the Qemu Agent option (we’ll install this later).
  • Set the SCSI Controller to VirtIO SCSI.
  • Use PVE-storage and create a 128 GB disk
  • Set Discard and SSD Emulation options
  • Set Cache to Write Back
  • Allocate 4 CPU Cores
  • Allocate 16 GB of Memory/minimum 4 GB Memory / Ballooning Device enabled
  • Run on HS Services Network, use Intel E1000 NIC, set VLAN Tag to 10

Start the VM and install Windows. Some notes include –

  • Enter the Windows 10 Pro product key
  • Use the Windows Driver disk to load a driver for the disk
  • Once Windows is up, use Windows Driver disk to install drivers for devices that did not install automatically. You can find the correct driver by searching for drivers from the root of the Windows Driver disk.
  • Install the qemu guest agent from the Windows Driver disk. It’s in the guest agent directory.
  • Set the Computer name, Workgroup, and Domain name for the VM.
  • Do a Windows update and install all updates next.

Setup Windows applications as follows –

  • Install Chrome browser
  • Install Dashlane password manager
  • Install Dropbox and Synology Drive
  • Install Start10
  • Install Directory Opus File Manager
  • Install PDF Viewer
  • Install Printers
  • Install media tools, VLC Player, and QuickTime Player
  • Install Network utilities, WebSSH
  • Install windows gadgets
  • Install DXlab, tqsl, etc.
  • Install Microsoft Office and Outlook
  • Install SmartSDR
  • Install WSJT-X, JTDX, JTalert
  • Install PSTRotator, Amplifer app
  • Install RealVNC
  • Install Benchmarks (Disk, Graphics, Geekbench)
  • Install Folding at Home
  • Need a sound driver for audio (Windows Remote Desktop or RealVNC).