: In your VM settings, set the disk Discard mode to "unmap".
`, delete it. Use `curl -L -o image.qcow2 "URL"` to follow redirects correctly. Windows 10 Qcow2 Download Fixed
Moving a QCOW2 image to a new host often triggers a Windows activation prompt because the system thinks the hardware has changed. : In your VM settings, set the disk Discard mode to "unmap"
: If you are moving a VM in KVM, copy the original UUID from the old .xml configuration file to the new one to preserve activation. Moving a QCOW2 image to a new host
If you boot the raw Qcow2 now, Windows will not see the virtual disk. You must attach the VirtIO driver ISO.
For years, obtaining a ready-to-use Windows 10 Qcow2 image was an exercise in frustration. The Qcow2 format (QEMU Copy-On-Write version 2) is the standard disk image format for KVM-based virtualization. Unlike VirtualBox’s VDI or VMware’s VMDK, Qcow2 offers native support for snapshots, compression, and efficient storage allocation. However, Microsoft does not distribute Windows 10 directly as a Qcow2 file. Instead, users had to download an ISO, install Windows manually inside a VM, then convert or clone the disk—a slow, repetitive process prone to driver issues (missing VirtIO drivers for storage and networking) and activation quirks.