Installing the Required Virtio Drivers on Windows VMs

Windows virtual machines (VMs) require the latest stable version of the Virtio drivers to work properly on OUTSCALE hypervisors. This version is installed on the official Windows OUTSCALE machine images (OMIs) for the six drivers (balloon, netkvm, viostor, vioscsi, vioser, and viorng).

If you created VMs using older OMIs, the appropriate version of the Virtio drivers may not be installed on it. Therefore, you need to install the latest stable version on these VMs.

If you install other versions of the Virtio drivers, the stability of your VMs is not guaranteed and these versions are not supported.

For more information about Virtio drivers, see the Fedora website.

Identifying Your Virtio Drivers Version

To identify the installed Virtio drivers and their version, run the following command on your VM:

(Get-WindowsDriver -Online -All) | Where-Object {$_.ProviderName -like "*Red*"} | Select-Object * | Format-Table -Autosize | Out-String -Width 4096 | Out-File C:\drivers.txt

This command returns information about each Virtio driver installed on the VM, including its version as the first element of each line:

Version         Driver   OriginalFileName                                                                              Inbox CatalogFile ClassName   ClassGuid                              ClassDescription    BootCritical DriverSignature
-------         ------   ----------------                                                                              ----- ----------- ---------   ---------                              ----------------    ------------ ---------------
62.72.104.12600 oem1.inf C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\viostor.inf_amd64_f57bb5cb6f66201a\viostor.inf False viostor.cat SCSIAdapter {4D36E97B-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} Storage controllers         True          Signed
62.72.104.12600 oem2.inf C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\netkvm.inf_amd64_86f72247bd094099\netkvm.inf   False netkvm.cat  Net         {4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} Network adapters           False          Signed
62.72.104.12600 oem3.inf C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\balloon.inf_amd64_ac8e1013d5702f6a\balloon.inf False Balloon.cat System      {4D36E97D-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} System devices              True          Signed
62.72.104.12600 oem4.inf C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\viorng.inf_amd64_80b3998b603cc617\viorng.inf   False viorng.cat  System      {4D36E97D-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} System devices              True          Signed
62.72.104.12600 oem5.inf C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\vioscsi.inf_amd64_9e5fd570349e223c\vioscsi.inf False vioscsi.cat SCSIAdapter {4D36E97B-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} Storage controllers         True          Signed
62.72.104.12600 oem6.inf C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\vioser.inf_amd64_8f2b8fc4022897b3\vioser.inf   False vioser.cat  System      {4D36E97D-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} System devices              True          Signed

If the Version column does not indicate the latest version for all the six drivers, or if one of them is missing, you need to install them on your VM. For more information, see Installing the Latest Virtio Drivers Version below.

Installing the Latest Virtio Drivers Version

If the Virtio drivers version installed on your VM is not the latest stable one, you need to install it. You can also remove the older versions that are not used anymore.

Before You Begin: Installing or updating a driver can damage the VM. It is strongly recommended to create a snapshot of the root device of the VM before perfoming any of these actions. For more information, see Creating a Snapshot of a Volume.

To download the iso file containing the latest stable version of Virtio drivers for Windows, click the following link from your VM: https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/stable-virtio/virtio-win.iso.
The file is downloaded on your VM.
Open the dowloaded .iso file and extract the drivers using the following path:
```
:\\DRIVER_NAME\2k16\amd64\DRIVER_NAME.inf
```
For each driver, right-click the .inf file and click Install. The selected drivers are installed on the VM.
To delete the older drivers:
1. Identify the drivers and their versions installed on the VM using the Identifying Your Virtio Drivers Version procedure above, or running the following command:
  Pnputil.exe -e
2. For each driver you want to delete, run the following command using the published name of the driver, in the oemX.inf format:
  Pnputil.exe -d oemX.inf
  The published name of the driver in the oemX format is displayed in the Driver column.

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