Usability of Qubes Tools for Windows 10

Hi,

well I have read the documentation of installing Qubes Windows Tools. Especially the known limitations of that software on, link: https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3585 . Also I discovered this video tutorial on you-tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mGop1B-kqU . The author, Mr. Chris Titus, of this video, which is from October 27th in 2019. Came to the conclusion that it is at that moment not advisable to install Qubes Tools for Windows.

Therefore I have this question: Do you think this issue changed in the meantime? Or is it better to wait for some time until the team of Qubes OS have programmed the necessary software. So that everything is running smoothly.

Since I am not in a hurry to install Qubes Tools for Windows.

All advice is appreciated.

Thank you.

Best Knut

I’ve successfully installed Qubes Windows Tools on Windows tools following the docs

But you should keep in mind some features are not available (broken down on the table in the docs).

Also AFAIK there is currently no-one with windows experience willing to update windows tools. So it will may not be worth waiting.

Hi,
Thank you so much for your advice so far. I managed to complete on web site https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/windows-tools/ up to step Nr. 9. However there is no window appearing if I start my Windows 10 VM. My task manager is telling me that I use 42 % of my memory which is 16 GB. And if I want to shutdown the Windows 10 VM after 8 minutes of nothing visible happening, I have to kill it. Since there are some processes running inside the VM, which are not visible to me.

What do you suggest?

Stay healthy & safe.

Best Knut

Occasionally you will have to manually start the GUI with qvm-start-gui <windows VM>.

When I type

then I don`t get an error message. However GUI is still not starting and I have to kill Windows-10 VM after 8 minutes again.

Not sure if I can help with the rest, this part here confused me. Supposedly here you have allocated a fixed amount of memory since windows allegedly doesn’t do well memory balancing. Did you follow the guide on the docs to create the windows VMs?

Hi,
as far as I can see I followed the instructions on this page.
However I unchecked memory balancing and I gave the windows 10 StandaloneVM Initial memory 5000 MB.
Is this what you are referring to?
Thank you.
Stay healthy & safe

Best Knut

I see. I guess that’s fine. It’s just I had not seen that option before.

Hi,
through the Qubes OS mailing list I have come across the following interesting documentation on setting up a Microsoft Windows 10 qube, link: https://github.com/elliotkillick/qvm-create-windows-qube/blob/master/README.md . However I do not understand what is meant by “<qube_script_is_located_on>” in step number 2 of the instructions. Since I am no expert in coding. Could somebody please explain this to me?

All help is appreciated.
Thank you.

Stay healthy & safe.

Best Knut

Well, it is the name of the qube (appVM) you user to download the file. (Because you can’t dowload it directly to dom0.

Regards,

A while ago I used ‘qvm-create-windows-qube’ in order to install a Windows-10-Qube, which did work out to be very easy.

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What about your Qubes Windows Tools? Did you manage to install them?

Hi

well I just ran the command in the dom0 terminal: sudo qubes-dom0-update qubes-windows-tools . This successfully installed qubes-windows-tools.noarch 4.0.1-3 in dom0 :

However in order to test my successful installation I tried to test my clipboard to copy text from AppVM vault to StandaloneVM windows-10. This was not working.

As far as I know this is the main feature of Qubes-Windows-Tools.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Does anyone have an idea how to get my clipboard working?

Thank you.

Best Knut

Hi. You must be following the instructions for installing on windows 7. If you follow the guide for windows 10, it doesn’t include that command.

Well I found this command in an external site outside of the official Qube OS documentation.

However now I am following the instructions of the official Qubes OS instructions. Therefore I include 2 screenshots of my last 2 configuration steps. After step Nr. 7 my GUI of Windows 10 is not starting anymore. So I think that my mistake is in this installation of the Qubes Windows Tools.

Please help me.

Thank you.

Best Knut

I think these were my settings. Not sure if it’s correct, but it did work.

Thank you very much deeplow! This solved the whole issue! I am very happy and grateful to you now! :smile: :smile: :smile:

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