I brought my Linux laptop to work to showcase a Windows 10 virtual machine, but I encountered a problem—QEMU is still requiring the installation ISO to boot the VM. Coming from a Windows background, I assumed that once the OS was installed, the ISO was no longer necessary and deleted it. Now, it seems QEMU needs certain files from the ISO for booting. Is there a way to extract those files and store them on my SSD to avoid keeping the whole ISO? I'd really appreciate any help so I can present this to my coworker!
2 Answers
You can actually get rid of the ISO after the installation. Just check the hardware settings for your VM and make sure to unselect the CD-ROM in the boot options. That should do the trick!
Right, you definitely need to detach the ISO from the QEMU config. If it’s still attached, QEMU expects it to be there when booting up the VM.
Thanks for the tip! I looked into it, but it seems the SATA CD-ROM option is greyed out for me. When I try to run the VM, I get an "Error starting domain" message that references the ISO. I'm just trying to understand why it's pulling from there instead of booting normally.