Windows 2016 and 2019: Network adapter disappears after executing virtio-win-guest-tools.exe

[rgl]

In Windows 2016 and 2019, after installing virtio-win-guest-tools.exe from virtio-win-0.1.208.iso the network stops working.

This happens while I'm building the image with packer from the Windows iso. Windows autounattended correctly finds the drivers and is able to install Windows. But, after Windows is installed, and execute virtio-win-guest-tools.exe is executed, and for some reason, while its running, the network goes down and the network adapter even disappears from Device Manager.

Please note that this worked correctly with virtio-win-0.1.190.iso.

Do you have any idea of what might the problem?

PS: It works fine with Windows 2022; but not for 2016 and 2019.

[vrozenfe]

@rgl

Hi Rui,

Can you please share setup api log file ( https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/setupapi-device-installation-log-entries ) ? At least the section that covers uninstall with the following attempt to install netkvm driver?

Thanks, Vadim.

[rgl]

From all the .log files inside %SystemRoot%\Inf, only C:\Windows\Inf\setupapi.dev.log seems to have errors. It fails installing the pvpanic driver (sorry, but I only have screenshot):

And it also fails to install (this seems to the the Device instance path for the Red Hat VirtIO Ethernet Adapter device):

That first error seems to prevent the network driver from being installed. If I go to the Device Manager and manually install the Network Driver for the Red Hat VirtIO Ethernet Adapter device, it works.

[rgl]

FYI, this is still not working with virtio-win-0.1.215.iso.

[YanVugenfirer]

@kostyanf14 please take a look

[rgl]

With virtio-win-0.1.221.iso, Windows 2019 works correctly.

Since I no longer use Windows 2016, this issue is fixed for me. So I'm closing this.