Here are a few other approaches to get a QCOW2 image:
Get the latest Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) directly from Microsoft .
| Issue | Likely cause | Solution | |-------|-------------|----------| | “This PC can’t run Windows 11” during installation | Missing TPM or Secure Boot. | Add a TPM device (using swtpm) and ensure UEFI firmware is selected. | | No disk appears during installation | Missing VirtIO storage driver. | Click “Load driver” and point to the viostor folder on the VirtIO ISO. | | No network in the guest | Missing VirtIO net driver. | Install the netkvm driver from the VirtIO ISO. | | VM freezes shortly after boot | SPICE display incompatibility. | Switch from SPICE to SDL or VNC for the display. | | Host CPU usage is very high | Missing Hyper‑V enlightenment flags. | Add the hv_* flags to your QEMU command line. | | QCOW2 image grows too large | Discard/unmap not enabled. | Enable discard in the VM configuration or run qemu-img map to check fragmentation. |
If you are using hypervisors like Proxmox or standard KVM, you might wonder whether to use a raw ISO or a pre-baked disk image. The QCOW2 format provides distinct advantages:
Unlike raw disk images, QCOW2 offers several important benefits:
The safest and most reliable method is to create the QCOW2 file yourself. This guarantees a clean, unmodified Windows 11 installation. Here’s the professional workflow.