[RESPONDED] QEMU - Win11 Guest Recommendations/Instability

Framework Laptop 13 Linux
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Hi, I recently set up a Win11 gues and am now having trouble with stability using QEMU on my Fedora 39 install. I have the FW13 Ryzen 5 7640U and am intending on running the VM to replace my need for a Dual Boot setup and my use cases will be for academic report writing using the MS 365 suite as well as Endnote, Teams and any other software I may need as a final year engineering student. I also may multitask with iTunes open to listen to some music.

I have set up the VM and have been reasonably happy with it however I have having an issue where it is crashing my entire laptop and causing a full reboot. It seems that after booting the VM, it runs for about 5min until I attempt to do something intensive. The fans then ramp up and shortly after, the Fedora host does a full reboot.

I have played will a number of vcpu/core/thread passthrough configurations, including 8v/4c/2t and 6v/3c/2t as I am trying to maximise the performance of the guest. I do not intend to use the host (much) while the guest is running.

I am wondering if there is anything I can do to fix this issue so I can guarantee system stability while relying on my Win11 guest for uni work this year. Cheers!

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Be aware that Windows 11 GUI will be rendered by your CPU as libvirt can’t share your GPU between host and guest. Also, it’s a fallacy that you can starve the host for better guest performance - the host is where virtualization happens. I suggest these two items are why you are having instability in the host system.

There are also many questions here ! Are you using VirtIO drivers?

Is there some reason you are not using a Win10 VM? Win10 can run on next to nothing.

Also, have you installed things like spice-guest-tools in the guest?

https://spice-space.org/download.html

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You might also consider running your music and Teams on the host…?

When I run a Windows VM for compatibility, I am usually in and out of 365 or whatever I need, I don’t do anything else (and have all the eye candy in Windows turned off except font antialiasing)

1 Like
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Nothing to add per se as @SoldierSvejk has provided what the overall best option is likely going to be.