Troubleshooting Windows

There are many different issues that can arise when setting up a system with the level of complexity that goes into configuring Windows to run on-top of GNU/Linux. Below is a list of known issues with potential solutions:

NVIDIA Driver Error/Device Manager Error Code 43

NVIDIA back in 2014, driver version 337.88 installed a feature that checked if the driver was being installed on an OS within a virtual environment. Still included in the latest drivers today while doing this check it looks at which GPU is being used and if it's not on the official support list for use in a VM the driver will refuse to install and Device Manager will report Error 43. There are workarounds for this. Any that have been known to work are listed below:

Obfuscate the Hypervisor (Edit Libvirt)

One option is to try and make it unclear to the host that it's running in a VM. By doing this the check the NVIDIA Driver performs during installation doesn't register that it's within a virtual environment and allows the driver to install. We can achieve this by making some tweaks to the .XML file:

<features>
	<hyperv>
		...
		<vendor_id state='on' value='lookinglass'/>
		...
	</hyperv>
	...
	<kvm>
	<hidden state='on'/>
	</kvm>
</features>

Note: "value" may contain any series of alphanumeric characters so long as it does not exceed 12 in length.