Windows 11 in Proxmox: A Controlled Experiment Gone Right (Hopefully)

Solving Problems

Have you ever wanted to use Windows, but not have it bloat your system or have a very specific use case? Installing one program means three services you didn’t ask for, registry clutter that never truly goes away, and mysterious “helper” apps haunting your system forever. I hit the point where I no longer trust Windows to touch my actual machine.

So instead, I’m putting Windows 11 inside a Proxmox VM. No internet. No bloat. No chance for chaos. At least not yet.

Let’s Get Started!

Prepping Proxmox

For this install of proxmox, we will be focusing on my node called ‘midna’. Everything that I show in these instructions will refer to my node. Whenever you see my node name, refer to it as your node name.

With the node expanded you should see a few drives/partitions on my node. The local-lvm is where VM Disks and CT Volumes are, and local is where backups, ISO images, and CT templates are which we will be using. The VirtIO and Windows 11 ISOs will be stored in the local drive partition.

Needed Files

• Windows 11 ISO
  • Scroll down until you see Download Windows 11 Disk Image(ISO) for x64 devices. Select from dropdown menu: “Windows 11 (multi-edition ISO for x64 devices)”. Click “Confirm”.
  • Next section, “Select the Product Language”, choose what language you want, I will be using English (United States). Click “Confirm”.
  • Instead of left-clicking on the “64-bit download” button to download the file locally, right-click on it instead and copy the link. Paste this link in Notepad, Sticky Notes, or another temporary file to hold the link.
• Windows VirtIO Drivers (latest version)
  • Right-click and copy the address for the latest ISO for the drivers. Paste the link in the same temporary place you pasted the Windows 11 ISO link.

Downloading the ISOs straight into Proxmox

Alright, within your node. Head to the disk under your node tree called local (your-node-name), then click on “ISO Images”. At the top of the page, click the button “Download from URL”.

With the “Downloading from URL” window up in the Proxmox tab, paste the URL in the URL field. Click “Query URL” next.

The file name will populate with “Win11_<some-version-here>_x64.ISO”, click the “Download” button.

A new window will open and it will show the download of the ISO. The download will be completed when TASK OK shows up at the bottom of the logs. When it’s done, click the X at the top right corner of the window.

Now, in local -> ISO Images, there should be 2 files, the virtio and Win11 ISO’s.

Creating the VM

The creation of the VM will be a little difficult, please review everything before finishing the configuration of the VM.

In the top-right corner of the Proxmox WebGUI, a “Create VM” button should be available. Click that button and a new window will pop up. I will be laying out the settings I have picked for the tabs shown in the window.

• General
  • Node - Select the node you want the VM on, make sure it has plenty of resources for the VM.
  • VM ID - Type in the VM ID you want associated with it or leave it defaulted.
  • Name - I named my VM ‘music-box’, name it something that you will know what the VM is for by quick glance.
  • Tags - I put ‘music’ and ‘no-internet’ down as my tags. If you want to organize your VMs, this is the best way to do it. You can also set this later when the VM is made.
• OS
  • Use CD/DVD disc image file (ISO)
    • Storage: local
    • ISO image: Win11…iso
  • Guest OS
    • Type: Microsoft Windows
    • Version: 11/2022/2025
    • Check box - Add additional drive for VirtIO drivers
      • Storage: local
      • ISO image: virtio-win.iso
• System
  • Graphic Card: VirtIO-GPU
  • Machine: q35
  • BIOS: OVMF (UEFI)
  • Check box: Add EFI Disk
  • EFI Storage: I recommend setting this. Using local won’t work, if no other disks are available, use local-lvm
  • SCSI Controller: VirtIO SCSI single
  • Check box: Qemu Agent
  • Check box: Add TPM (Windows 11 requires a TPM unless you disable it via CMD in the installation steps)
    • TPM Storage: Select an available drive to store TPM data
    • Version: 2.0 (recommended with Windows 11)
• Disks
  • Bus/Device: SCSI (default is 0)
  • SCSI Controller: VirtIO SCSI single
  • Storage: local-lvm
  • Disk size (GiB): 64 (minimum requirement for windows)
  • Check box (optional): SSD Emulation (if you are having this VM running on an SSD)
• CPU
  • Sockets: 1 (if you have more than one CPU socket on your motherboard, increase here if you would like)
  • Cores: 4 (increase the number of cores you want your VM to have, just don’t over provision)
  • Check box - Enable NUMA
• Memory
  • Memory (MiB): 16384

Note: The math for MiB to GB is: num_of_ram_wanted_in_GB x 1024 = num_of_ram_wanted_in_MiB.
Ex. 16 GB x 1024 = 16384 MiB.

• Network
  • Bridge: vmbr0 - defaults to it
  • VLAN Tag: no VLAN
  • Model: Intel E1000E
  • MAC Address: Auto
  • Check box - Firewall
  • Check box - Disconnect

I recommend not connecting the VM to the internet during initial setup. There is a section where the installer will ask to connect to internet, we need to bypass that prompt.

After setting up the network configurations, make sure to check the box ‘Start after created’. Click ‘Finish’ then head over to the ‘Console’ tab on the left side of the screen.

Setting up the VM

Eventually, a screen will pop up that says, “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD….”. Press any key as you will enter the Boot Manager Menu.

Once you get to a nice nostalgic blue and grey background configuration screen, use the arrow keys and select ‘Boot Manager’ using your ‘Enter’ key.

At this menu, you may see more than 3 drives but you are going to be using one that says DVD-ROM. One of the DVD-ROM drives will be the VirtIO ISO, and another will be the Windows 11 ISO. If you select the wrong one, don’t worry. It will try to load, but take you right back to the Boot Manager menu. At that time, select the other drive. If you do have more than 3 drives, then testing will need to be done on which is which. In this case, my Windows 11 ISO was labeled UEFI QEMU DVD-ROM QM00003.

After selecting the correct drive, a PROXMOX logo will appear on screen and will start loading into Windows with the iconic Windows startup loading circle. You will be greeted with the ‘Windows 11 Setup - Select language settings’ window. Now, I will be skipping through parts and show only changes I make.

In “Select Image” window, you can choose any version of Windows you want. I recommend Windows 11 Pro for compatibility in older versions of software. Windows license keys can be found anywhere on the internet.

Reaching the “Select location to install Windows 11” window, you will notice there is no drives listed. Click on ‘Load Drivers’.

Click ‘Browse’ to look for the VirtIO drivers.

Under “This PC”, click on virtio-win-X.X.XXX. Head to amd64, then select w11. Click ‘OK’.

You may have multiple drivers show up, in that case, click the checkbox next to “Hide drivers that aren’t compatible with this computer’s hardware”. This should show only one driver which the description should be close to “Red Hat VirtIO SCSI pass-through controller”. Click ‘Install’.

After Windows is done searching for disks, the SCSI disk will show now for the Windows 11 install, select it and click ‘Next’.

On the “Ready to install” page, click ‘Install’. Windows may restart a few times and also it is going to be a long process depending on the amount/type of resources you gave the VM.

Select everything you want, but pause on the “Let’s connect you to a network” page.

To bypass “needing internet” issue, use SHIFT + F10 to bring up Command Prompt (Administrator). In CMD, type OOBE\BYPASSNRO; what this will do is restart the installation which you may need to reselect everything. Once you get to the network connection page again, you should see an option that says “I don’t have internet” down below. Click on it.

Once you are done typing in all your information (PC name, password, security questions, preferences), Windows will start running the rest of the installation in the background. Giving you updates in very vague ways on its progress.

Once it’s done setting everything up, you will be shown a Windows 11 Desktop! YAY! 🥳

We are not done here yet, click on the File Explorer icon in the taskbar and look on the left side for the virtio-win-X.X.XXX drive again. Click on it to open it up in the tab and click on the folder “guest-agent”. Install qemu-ga-x86_64, it may ask if you want to allow the unknown publisher to make changes to the system, click ‘Yes’.

After the installation, let’s check to see if the agent is running properly. On the search bar on the bottom, type “Services” and click ‘Open”. The service that needs to be checked is called “QEMU Guest Agent”. The status needs to be in “Running”. If it’s in any other status, try to restart the service or restart Windows.

That is it! The Windows VM is running and should be usable offline! If internet connection is required, go to the “Hardware” tab of the VM in Proxmox and double click on “Network Device”. Uncheck the “Disconnect” checkbox. The VM may try to update, phone home, or try to activate Windows when internet is connected.