Wanted to love Unraid as hypervisior - failed on Win7 and Win10 VM -

I wanted to redo my home media server as a VM on unraid.    The unraid setup was super easy and very well.  However I couldnt get a win7 or win10 VM running. 

 

For win7, it kept failing the drivers telling me the virtual drivers were unsigned and couldnt be used.  I did some reading from threads with the same problem and they recommended a differnt win7 iso.  I tried a second iso with same issue.

 

For Win10, it took the drivers fine and started the install but it started looping some error messages at restart.

 

For motherboards, I was using a Asus PSQ-EM which is an Intel LGA775  chipset board with Intel G45/ ICH10R chipset.

 

Does any of this sound like a hardware issue?  Is there a recommend system/chip set when running VMs?  I was looking at replacing this motherboard to get something with IPMI as the server closet doesnt really have a lot of room for keyboard/monitor.  If I make a purchase I would love to get something that plays nice with unraid.  Any recommendations?

I have both a Windows 7 and a Windows 10 VM.  Not sure about your issue with Windows 7, but use the stable virtio drivers and you should be good.  When you start the installation it will tell you that no storage device was found.  Load the drivers at this point and you should be good.

 

On the Windows 10 VM you may need to have only one CPU to get it installed.  After that, you can add more CPUs.

 

See if this guide doesn't help:  http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_Manual_6

 

The LGA775 processor series won't support VT-d so you can't pass through a GPU.

 

It can be done, just work your way through it.

I want to second this by dlandon. I have actually just installed 2 VM's on 2 seperate unRAID boxes with Windows 7 (as this is what I had a valid licence for). I followed the same instructions as dlandon above for utilising virtio viostor driver to let Windows 7 setup see the virtual hard drive so it has something to install to.

 

To go a bit further I applied all latest updates* and then activated Windows 7 and then took a backup of the VM. Then I upgraded the VM to Windows 10** and then took another backup of the VM.

 

*Note that I found that Windows Update in Windows 7 via VM takes a long time to find updates. Don't be discouraged, just leave it "looking" and it will eventually find updates and prompt for installation.

**Note that I have found in order to install the Windows 10 update you have to reduce the Virtual CPU cores to just 1 core otherwise the update will fail. You can re-apply the number of cores you want following the install.

 

I now have 2 fully licensed and activated Window 10 VM's. Backup up and working great!

 

For the record I used: virtio-win-0.1.105 as this is the one I had stored from this link:

 

Latest Stable:

https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/virtio-win-0.1.102/

 

Latest:

https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/virtio-win-0.1.112-1/

That is exactly the FAQ I started from..  What you did (install windows 7 and pick up the windows 10 upgrade) is exactly what I was hoping to do so I will try windows 7 again.    I was enabling all the core for the windows 10 install all the cores so maybe that is  why it failed. 

 

For windows 7 -  I did (at least I think I did) follow to a tea those instructions.

 

There is another thread on this that points to the install media causing the problem with 'unsigned drivers'

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=41652.15

 

Maybe I will try to get another windows 7 iso that includes SP1 as listed in that URL above.  or try to install the 32 bit version of windows 7 or try a different version of  virtio drivers.  The trick is that this is our tv server so to take it down means I need to start late when others are sleeping.   

 

 

If I understand correctly, the lack of VT-d means I cant push the computers graphics to an attached monitor?  If that all I would be missing, if so that doesnt matter me to as I only remote in to this box.  It is a media server that I run sagetv on, so basically it just functions as a file server

 

Thanks for the encouragement.    I think my new PC idea is mostly driven by not having any down time and by the fact that there are some nice super micro xeon boxes on Ebay under $120.  Considering I could spend $50 just adding memory to my existing box it got me thinking.

You can only install 64 bit vm on unRaid.

For windows the latest you can use are v0.1.109-2. versions since then are not digitally signed and wont install in the windows setup.

you can update to the latest after installation but you'll need to read up on how to install non digitally assigned drivers on 64bit windows.

 

Also to be honest, performance back to v0.1.96-1 arent any different to the latest so i wouldnt worry about not having the latest drivers installed. performance improvements will come from updated versions of the hypervisor anyway. changelog is here: https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/CHANGELOG

It turned out that it was my windows 7 install ISO.  I had a really old (pre sp1) iso so decided to try and find a newer ISO

 

Microsoft/Digital River pulled the windows 7 images a while ago making it bit harder to find an original Microsoft ISO.  Here is a link with some info on all the original Microsoft untouched ISOs

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/31k5yr/where_to_find_original_untouched_windows_7_isos/

 

en_windows_7_professional_with_sp1_x64_dvd_u_676939 <- this original microsoft ISO is what i used and it played nice with the unraid installer

 

 

You can only install 64 bit vm on unRaid.

Huh? I have a Win7 32 bit running great on 3GB of RAM.

http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#Can_KVM_run_a_32-bit_guest_on_a_64-bit_host.3F_What_about_PAE.3F

You can only install 64 bit vm on unRaid.

Huh? I have a Win7 32 bit running great on 3GB of RAM.

http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#Can_KVM_run_a_32-bit_guest_on_a_64-bit_host.3F_What_about_PAE.3F

Correct.  I have 2 Win7 32 bit VMs running on one of my unRAID servers as well.  Works great.  You just have to install the 32 bit version of the vio drivers on the install cd image.

Bob, Was that the only divergence from normal unraid VM installation using the 32 bit version of the VirtIO drivers?

Bob, Was that the only divergence from normal unraid VM installation using the 32 bit version of the VirtIO drivers?

That was all I had to do - Yes.  I followed the new install instructions exactly but I used the 32 bit (x86) drivers instead of the 64 bit (amd64) drivers.  I installed Windows 7 Pro 32 bit from my TechNet ISO.