Standard IDE emulation is slow. Download the ISO from the Fedora Project. During Windows installation, "Load Driver" and point to the VirtIO SCSI and Network folders to enable high-speed I/O. Enable KVM Acceleration
Windows 8 can feel sluggish in a virtual environment without proper tuning. Use VirtIO Drivers windows 8 qcow2
Easily save and revert to specific system states. Standard IDE emulation is slow
Use the following command to boot the ISO. Note the use of virtio drivers for maximum performance. qemu-system-x86_64 -m 2G -drive file=windows8.qcow2,if=virtio -cdrom win8_install.iso -net nic,model=virtio -enable-kvm Performance Optimization if=virtio -cdrom win8_install.iso -net nic
Protects the virtual disk at the storage level. Creating a Windows 8 QCOW2 Image
To build an image from scratch, you will need an ISO file and the qemu-img utility. 1. Initialize the Disk