How to set up a Virtio Network Adapter

[DRamos]

Can someone give me some pointers on how to install a Virtio Netword Adapter on a windows guest.

[freejack]

Shutdown the Windows guest, change the virtualbox adapter type to virtio in the advanced settings of the network adapter and reboot. In Windows device manager the virtio NIC will show up with an exclamation mark due to the missing driver. Get the current stable driver iso image here https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Windows_Virtio_Drivers and install the driver in the guest.

This works here just fine for Win 7 guest on Linux host using VirtualBox 5.0.8.

[DRamos]

Thanks freejack for your reply. I was able to use the latest Fedora driver version 0.1.110 from Sep 2015 on my Windows 10 guest VM. Based on your suggestions I noted the installation steps in somewhat more detail.

Installing Virtio Network Driver on a Windows Guest VM:
- First make sure the VM is shut down.
- On the host VM Manager: Add a Network Adapter in the network settings of the VM
Select the adapter type: "Paravirtualized Network (virtio-net)"
- Download the already built & signed iso distribution from Fedora/Red Hat: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Windows_Virtio_Drivers
- On VM: Open the iso file (e.g with 7zip) & extract the NetKVM folder e.g. to the default: Documents folder. or mount the iso file to a virtual drive.
- On VM: Start the device manager:> mmc devmgmt.msc or:> control hdwwiz.cpl
- Open the unidentified "Other Devices\Ethernet Controller" Properties dialog.
- Click on update driver, browse & install the folder with the NetKVM\os_version.
- Open the control panel and go to network connection:> control ncpa.cpl
,and give the new net work adapter a more appropriate name e.g. "Virtio-Ethernet"
- Verify adapter settings with:> ipconfig