When setting up a Windows 10 image using the KVM virt-manager (following popular online articles), using it just as is yields poor user experience with the following problems:

• Low frame refresh rate
• Laggy mouse cursor movement
• No easy access to file transfer between Guest and Host

This article aims to collate a list of tool you can download and use for free to address such performance and accessibility issues when using a Windows 10 Guest.

• virtio drivers
• Windows File System Proxy (WinFSP)
• virtio-win-guest-tools.exe

What To Do

For Performance Improvement: 🔴

[WIP] Please follow this video tutorial by Blandman Studios to install the virtio drivers.

Read in greater detail why virtio drivers help improve performance here. TLDR - It does so by allowing direct access to underlying Linux drives, rather than slower emulated Windows in KVM.

Download virtio drivers here. Be sure to select Stable virtio-win ISO.

⚠️ For unknown reasons, downloading this .iso file will take a long time. Would recommend using this unofficial mirror link instead.

For Easy File Sharing: 🔵

[WIP] Please follow this article by debugpoint to install WinFSP and virtio-win-guest-tools.exe

Download WinFSP here. Be sure to select the .msi file of the latest version. Eg. winfsp-2.0.23075.msi.

Download virtio-win-guest-tools.exe here.

References

1. How to Create a Windows Virtual Machine in Linux With KVM
2. Why should we install Virtio drivers when using Windows 10 inside KVM by Blandman Studios
3. virtio_win-pkg-scripts Downloads
4. Share Folder Between Windows Guest and Linux Host in KVM using virtiofs
5. Windows VirtIO Drivers