Hello everyone, I’m new to using Qubes and have some questions.
I’m using Qubes version 4.3.0 an have installed Windows11 as HVM. I would like to install the Qubes Windows Tools. I assume I should install the latest version of the Qubes Windows Tools as well.
Are there currently any security concerns?
How exactly do I install these Qubes Windows Tools?
I would really appreciate any help.
Best regards
I looked at the linked page, but unfortunately I’m currently overwhelmed by it. Could someone give me a few tips?
I have installed Qubes 4.3.0 and would like to install Windows 11 as an HVM. Ideally, I’d like to use it in full-screen mode. Is that possible? Seamless mode is not important to me for now. With the requirements I’ve described here, should I expect display issues such as duplicated windows or similar problems? What kind of behavior should I anticipate?
Is it just me, or is this guide extremely mixed between instructions for Windows 7 and Windows 10/11? So much of it is unclear. For example, I can’t get any further here:
As this new QWT version is only provided for Qubes R4.3, it has to be installed by downloading the .rpm file from the repository (version 4.2.2-1 ) if you want to use it in Qubes R4.2.
I want nothing bad, i only want to download the Tools für Windows11. Where can i download it?
There are different QWT sources, depending on which Windows version you are using.
For you, with Windows 11 on Qubes R4.3, the following part is relevant:
sudo qubes-dom0-update qubes-windows-tools, without the need for downloading the package, because it is already part of the R4.3 repositories. (I’ll amend the documentation to make this clearer.)qvm-start VMNAME --install-windows-tools.qubes-tools-4.2.2.exe, which contains the Windows installer for QWT.GUI agent (EXPERIMENTAL), as this would put you into the - still somewhat unreliable - seamless mode.If you should run into problems, feel free to ask again!
Thank you very much for this very structured and comprehensible message! I will try this out! I am very grateful to you!
I have successfully completed the installation of the Qubes Windows Tools. I did not select the ‘GUI agent’ option.
I have two initial questions:
bcdedit /set testsigning on and Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted.When I set it to 1920x1200, the width is also too large. In this case, Alt+F11 only adjusts the height to full screen; in full-screen mode, the image remains too wide for the monitor.
Thanks in advance.
I can’t answer the other stuff, but don’t turn testsigning off. It breaks the tools. If you want to try for some reason, it can be done by running bcdedit /set testsigning off. I haven’t tested on a qube with the gui agent installed, but it broke file transfer and clipboard integration.
As @random1 stated, turning off testsigning is likely to break the functionality of QWT and may even make the system unbootable. The PowerShell parameter may be reset after completing QWT installation; I haven’t tested that, however.
With regard to the screen resolutions, you’ll have to experiment, because this is very hardware-dependent. Setting it to a smaller value in Windows may have the effect that you want. For instance, my screen is 1920x1200, and I get a smaller screen displayed on the Qubes background if I set the Windows screen resolution to something like 1450x1024 or so.
And I get a smaller screen on the Qubes background when I set the Windows screen resolution to around 1450x1024 or so.
That works for me as well — 1440x900 or 1400x1050. However, at those resolutions Alt+F11 no longer works. Is there a trick for that?
I have the same behavior. Full-screen works only if the screen resolution is set to the value of the physical screen, which for me is 1920x1200.
This is somewhat plausible and applies to using the Windows menu as well., not only to Alt-F11.
Thank you.
Hello GWeck :),
it’s been quite some time. Since then, my Windows 11 installation under Qubes has been working very well overall, I must say, with the exception of the window not responding properly (Alt+F11, etc.). Has a solution for this issue been found in the meantime?
One thing I noticed back then is that after installing the Qubes Windows Tools, my Windows 11 HVM started booting very slowly, even on extremely fast hardware (Ryzen 9 9900X, etc). Once it has finished booting, however, it runs very fast.
Is there any way to significantly speed up the startup of the Windows 11 HVM? Before installing the Qubes Windows Tools, Windows 11 booted very quickly.
Thank you very much for your help!
In my installation, Alt+F11 works if and only if the screen resolution is set to that of the physical display. Apart from that, it works quite well - with one exception: Pressing the Windows key should open the Windows menu. Sometimes this happens, sometimes only an empty pseudo-window is opened where the menu should be displayed, and sometimes the graphical display beaks down completely. I found no reproducible pattern in this behavior.
My Windows 11 HVM (template or AppVM) always boots extremely slowly, but I haven’t tested without QWT so far; I’ll do that in the next few days and report back. In general, the VM became slightly faster when I increased its memory to 16 GiB, but it is still so slow that, for real work, I continue using Windows 7.
For a really fast Windows system, none of the newer ones reaches the speed of XP, but there’s no QWT for that, and, anyhow, that’s a bit old. This just shows how much garbage M$ has added to Windows in the last years. 
Hi @timw234,
I have now checked booting three W11 VMs, with quite curious results:
I have no idea what this means, but it is bad in any case.
I started today my Windows 11 installation after installing the Qubes Windows Tools and measured the boot time (from clicking the shortcut to the screensaver appearing before the Windows PIN prompt). The boot process took just over 44 seconds.
Before installing the Qubes Windows Tools, Windows started in just a few seconds (I would estimate no more than 10 seconds). However, I didn’t measure it with a stopwatch at the early time.
Did you happen to use relatively low-performance hardware for your testing? My test environment consists of an AMD Ryzen 9 9900X processor and a fast PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.
I also didn’t express myself correctly earlier. Alt+F11 works perfectly fine. The problem is that the Windows 11 window is unfortunately not as flexible. I believe this feature is called Seamless Mode , which doesn’t seem to be available here.
What is the reason for this, and what is the next step to make Seamless Mode work with Windows 11? Who is responsible for implementing this? It´s about Qubes OS oder about Qubes-Windows-Tools?
Or are there any newer versions of Qubes OS or the Qubes Windows Tools that already include Seamless Mode support for Windows 11?
There’s a meta thread for discussing the implementation of QWT : qubes-windows-tools: Support for Windows 10/11 · Issue #1861 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub . Qubes team member omeg is making significant contribution to the modern QWT and Windows-Qubes integration.
As far as I can tell, through GWeck’s report ( Windows 11 in Qubes - #169 by GWeck ) seamless mode used to work under Qubes 4.2.4 and Windows 10 with QWT 4.2.1, but not Windows 11.
It surely is not the fastest system: nearly 10 years old, using a Core I5-7200U processor. But I measured from starting the VM until the taskbar is displayed and functional. There’s a lot of time until the desktop is displayed, and this happens without the taskbar being shown. And even then, it takes about half a minute or even a minute until the taskbar appears. This has been an issue with W11 for several years; it is still not fixed with the 25H2 version.
For seamless mode, have a look at the references shown by @augsh and at the QWT documentation. The current version 4.2.2 of QWT behaves somewhat better than the previous version 4.2.1, especially with W11, but it is still far from satisfactory and may depend on the graphics hardware, e.g., Intel vs. Nvidia.
The problems with seamless mode that come up most of the time are connected with the display of the Windows menu (both in W10 and W11). I remember an earlier discussion where @marrmarek (???) stated that the Windows menu in these versions is no real window but something weird. But M$ is always good at producing software that does not respect any defined interfaces but instead uses some crap created after the twentieth beer.
I am still hoping that @omeg will produce a newer QWT version, as 4.2.2 is from November '25, but so far, nothing seems to have happened there.
It was a dumb thing to ask so deleted it. Sorry.
I just tried it off and QWT wouldn’t work. I was able to log in, though, to revert it back to on.
Can someone tell me what would be the point of enabling seamless window in a StandaloneVM?