Elastic Compute Service:Install the virtio driver

Limits

The operations that are described in this topic are suitable for the following Windows operating system versions: Windows 7 and later 64-bit and Windows Server 2008 R2 and later 64-bit.

Procedure

1. When you create an image based on a virtual machine, download the installation package of a specific virtio driver version based on the operating system of the virtual machine and decompress the installation package.

   The following table describes the URLs from which you can download the virtio driver installation packages for different Windows operating systems.

   Operating system	Installation package	Download URL
   Windows 7 64-bit or Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit	AliyunVirtio_58101_WIN2008R2_x64.exe	AliyunVirtio_Windows 2008R2.zip
   Windows 8.1 64-bit or Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit	AliyunVirtio_58101_WIN2012R2_x64.exe	AliyunVirtio_Windows 2012R2.zip
   Windows 10 or later 64-bit or Windows Server 2016 or later 64-bit	AliyunVirtio_58101_WIN2016_x64.exe	AliyunVirtio_Windows 2016.zip

2. Install the virtio driver.

   Install the virtio driver by using a GUI-based installation program

   Important

   During the GUI-based installation of the virtio driver, network interface controller (NIC) drivers are updated. As a result, network connections are interrupted for approximately 10 seconds. To prevent the impacts of the network connection interruptions on your business, assess the risks and make preparations in advance.

   1. Find and double-click the AliyunVirtio_58101_WIN2016_x64.exe file in the directory to which you downloaded the virtio driver installation package.

   2. Install the virtio driver as prompted.

      

   3. Click Finish on the page shown in the following figure to restart the system for the configurations to take effect.

      

      Note

      If you receive an error message that is similar to "The SHA-2 patch must be installed for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2", the patch that enables SHA2 code signing support is not installed. If you want to create an image based on the virtual machine and import the image to Alibaba Cloud, we recommend that you install the patch on the virtual machine to ensure that ECS instances created from the imported image start as expected.

   Install the virtio driver by using a CLI

   1. Run the following command in Windows PowerShell to switch to the directory to which you downloaded the virtio driver installation package. Example directory: C:\test.

      cd C:\test

   2. Run the following command to install the virtio driver:

      ./AliyunVirtio_58101_WIN2016_x64.exe /SILENT /FORCE /NORESTART

      Note

      • /SILENT: installs the virtio driver in silent mode.

      • /FORCE: installs the virtio driver in force mode and force-overwrites existing virtio driver settings.

      • /NORESTART: installs the virtio driver without automatically restarting the system.

3. Check whether the virtio driver is installed.

   1. Run the following command in Windows PowerShell to query the version number of the virtio driver:

      (Get-Item C:\Windows\System32\drivers\viostor.sys).VersionInfo.ProductVersion

      The following command output is returned, which includes a driver version number and indicates that the virtio driver is installed.

      

   2. Run the following command to obtain the registry configurations of the viostor service:

      Get-ItemProperty  -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\viostor"

      Note

      In most cases, the viostor service is linked to the virtio driver in virtualization environments. If an entry about the viostor service exists in the registry, a command output is returned indicating that the virtio driver is installed.

      The following command output indicates that the virtio driver is installed.

      

   After you perform the preceding steps and verify that the virtio driver is installed, you can import the images that are created based on the virtual machine to Alibaba Cloud.