Mastering Proxmox - Third Edition

Installing VirtIO drivers after Windows installation

This method is useful when Windows is already installed on a VM and you need to convert existing IDE/SATA disk images to VirtIO type. In this method, the VirtIO driver must be loaded before the main OS disk image is changed to the VirtIO bus type. The following steps are how we can change the bus type of the main Windows OS disk image after Windows has already been installed on a non-VirtIO disk:

1. Create a small additional disk image.
2. Log in to Windows and load the VirtIO drive ISO image.
3. Install drivers so the additional VirtIO disk image is recognized and configured by Windows.
4. Shut down Windows, change the main OS disk image to VirtIO type, and delete the additional disk image. 
5. Restart ...