How to Install Windows Server on Proxmox VE

Installing Windows Server on Proxmox VE is straightforward once you know the one part that trips everyone up: the disk. Windows doesn’t ship with VirtIO drivers, so if you build the VM the fast way, setup starts and then shows you an empty list where your hard drive should be. Load one driver during setup and the rest is a normal Windows install.

This guide takes a Windows Server 2022 or 2025 install from start to finish on Proxmox VE 8.x. You’ll upload both the Windows ISO and the VirtIO driver ISO, create a VM with VirtIO SCSI and VirtIO networking, load the storage driver during setup, and finish by installing the guest tools and QEMU guest agent. The same steps apply to older Windows Server builds with only minor differences in which driver folder you pick.

If the Proxmox host isn’t built yet, install Proxmox VE on bare metal first, then come back here.

What you need first#

A few things make the install go smoothly. Get them lined up before you create the VM.

The VirtIO ISO is the piece people forget. The signed driver builds are published by the virtio-win project, and you want both the storage driver (vioscsi) and the network driver (NetKVM), plus the guest tools installer that bundles the QEMU guest agent. Download the stable ISO, not a nightly, unless you have a reason to chase a specific fix.

Step 1: Upload both ISOs to Proxmox#

Proxmox keeps ISOs on any storage that has the ISO image content type enabled — usually local by default. In the web interface, expand the node, click your ISO storage, open ISO Images, and use Upload to push the Windows Server ISO and the virtio-win ISO from your machine.

For large files, the browser upload can be slow or time out. Copying straight to the storage directory over SSH is more reliable:

# ISOs live here on the default 'local' storage
scp Windows_Server_2022.iso root@proxmox-host:/var/lib/vz/template/iso/
scp virtio-win.iso root@proxmox-host:/var/lib/vz/template/iso/

Either way, both ISOs should appear in the ISO Images list once they finish. You’ll attach both to the VM in the next step.

Step 2: Create the VM#

Click Create VM in the top right. Work through the wizard tab by tab — the defaults are fine in most places, but a few settings matter for Windows.

The two VirtIO choices — the SCSI controller and the network model — are what make disk and network I/O fast on Proxmox. They’re also why you need the driver ISO. If you’d rather not deal with loading a driver mid-setup, you can set the disk bus to SATA and the network to Intel E1000, install Windows, then switch to VirtIO afterward. It works, but you’ll do the driver dance eventually anyway, so loading it during setup is the cleaner path.

Step 3: Attach the VirtIO driver ISO as a second CD drive#

Before you boot, the VM needs the virtio-win ISO available so setup can read the storage driver from it. Open the VM, go to Hardware → Add → CD/DVD Drive, and attach the virtio-win ISO to that second drive.

You now have two optical drives: one with the Windows installer, one with the drivers. Check Options → Boot Order and make sure the Windows ISO drive is enabled and ordered before the disk so the installer starts.

Boot order: ide2 (Windows ISO)  →  scsi0 (the empty disk)
Second CD:  ide3 / sata0 (virtio-win ISO, not in boot order)

Step 4: Start setup and load the storage driver#

Start the VM and open the Console. Windows Server setup boots, you pick language and edition, and then you reach Where do you want to install Windows? — and the list is empty. This is expected, not a fault. The installer has no driver for the VirtIO SCSI controller.

Fix it from this screen:

1. Click Load driver, then Browse.
2. Open the virtio-win CD drive.
3. Navigate to vioscsi\<your Windows version>\amd64 — for example vioscsi\2k22\amd64 for Server 2022 or vioscsi\2k25\amd64 for Server 2025.
4. Select the driver and click Next.

The disk appears in the list. Select it and continue the install as normal.

Step 5: Finish the install and add the guest tools#

Once the storage driver loads, the rest of setup is the standard Windows Server experience — it copies files, reboots a couple of times, and lands you at the password screen. Set the Administrator password and log in.

You’re not quite done. The network adapter probably has no driver yet (no internet), and Proxmox can’t talk to the VM cleanly until the guest agent is installed. The virtio-win guest tools installer handles both at once.

1. Open File Explorer and go to the virtio-win CD drive.
2. Run virtio-win-gt-x64.msi (or virtio-win-guest-tools.exe).
3. Accept the defaults — it installs the NetKVM network driver, the balloon driver, and the QEMU guest agent.
4. Reboot when it finishes.

After the reboot, networking comes up on the VirtIO adapter and the agent starts running. Confirm Device Manager has no unknown devices left.

Step 6: Post-install checklist#

Before you treat the VM as production, close out the standard items. These are the things that bite later if you skip them now.

Detaching the ISOs is worth doing deliberately. A VM that keeps the Windows installer mounted and first in the boot order can drop back into setup if the disk ever fails to boot, which is confusing during an incident. Set the boot order to the disk only, and remove the CD drives or set them to Do not use any media.

Where to go from here#

A Windows Server VM on Proxmox behaves like any other guest once VirtIO and the guest agent are in place: it migrates between cluster nodes, snapshots cleanly, and backs up on a schedule. The only Windows-specific work is the driver load during setup and the guest tools afterward — everything else is standard Proxmox.

From here, set up a backup job so the server is protected from day one with Proxmox backup and restore. If you’re moving an existing Windows VM off another platform rather than installing fresh, migrating VMware VMs to Proxmox covers the same VirtIO driver work in a conversion context. And if you also run Linux guests, installing Ubuntu Server on Proxmox is the companion walkthrough. For more, browse the Proxmox guides.