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Windows 10 on Contabo SSD VPS

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(@edrock200)
Posts: 9
Active Member
Topic starter
 

First off, thank you to the authors/contributors of this site who have created the awesome guides and images.

I'm sure there is an easier way to do this, but my searches yielded no results, so I'm posting this in case someone else is trying to this. If there is an easier way, please feel free to trump my post with updated instructions/links.

Contabo appears to use virtio-scsi drivers for their SSD VPS, and I could not find a Win10 image, but did find a way to get it done with the guides here. Here's the high level steps I took:

Look at the VirtIO-SCSI instructions on this site for Windows 7 (at this time, I believe this is the only -scsi image available, others are marked "coming soon.")

Follow the instructions to get this image installed on your contabo SSD VPS, but change /dev/sdb at the end of the install statement to /dev/sda.

Reboot your VPS and login. Note, it will not be happy. Things like Event Viewer and other basic services will fail to load, and the system may even bug check if left on for a few hours, so you'll want to perform the next steps immediately after the image is loaded.

Download and install the latest virtio-scsi drivers (google proxmox virtio drivers, contabo uses proxmox as well.)

Download the Windows 10 image (free) from Microsoft's website. When you launch the downloader, do not tell it to upgrade Win7, tell it to create an iso. Once complete, mount the iso and copy the contents out to your c drive. From that folder you just copied to your C drive, run the setup.exe, which will kick off the windows 10 install. During the install, I chose to "erase everything" with regards to my previous settings/OS. Windows seemed resilient enough to keep the drivers it needed however. It also will ask you for a valid key, so you can register windows properly using this process. Once complete, Windows 10 came up without issue and has been very stable ever since. Even better, Contabo's CPU configuration is 2 sockets. I have the "top" vps package so it's 2 sockets, 5 cores each for 10 cores total, and 50gb ram. Windows 10 can see and use all ram, storage and cpu's. I note this because some other VPS providers present each core as a socket, and Windows 10 will only support up to 2 sockets.

Anyway, hope this may help someone along the way.

 
Posted : June 9, 2017 3:44 pm
vmmo96 reacted
(@sysadmin)
Posts: 265
Reputable Member Admin
 
Posted by: edrock200

First off, thank you to the authors/contributors of this site who have created the awesome guides and images.

I'm sure there is an easier way to do this, but my searches yielded no results, so I'm posting this in case someone else is trying to this. If there is an easier way, please feel free to trump my post with updated instructions/links.

Contabo appears to use virtio-scsi drivers for their SSD VPS, and I could not find a Win10 image, but did find a way to get it done with the guides here. Here's the high level steps I took:

Look at the VirtIO-SCSI instructions on this site for Windows 7 (at this time, I believe this is the only -scsi image available, others are marked "coming soon.")

Follow the instructions to get this image installed on your contabo SSD VPS, but change /dev/sdb at the end of the install statement to /dev/sda.

Reboot your VPS and login. Note, it will not be happy. Things like Event Viewer and other basic services will fail to load, and the system may even bug check if left on for a few hours, so you'll want to perform the next steps immediately after the image is loaded.

Download and install the latest virtio-scsi drivers (google proxmox virtio drivers, contabo uses proxmox as well.)

Download the Windows 10 image (free) from Microsoft's website. When you launch the downloader, do not tell it to upgrade Win7, tell it to create an iso. Once complete, mount the iso and copy the contents out to your c drive. From that folder you just copied to your C drive, run the setup.exe, which will kick off the windows 10 install. During the install, I chose to "erase everything" with regards to my previous settings/OS. Windows seemed resilient enough to keep the drivers it needed however. It also will ask you for a valid key, so you can register windows properly using this process. Once complete, Windows 10 came up without issue and has been very stable ever since. Even better, Contabo's CPU configuration is 2 sockets. I have the "top" vps package so it's 2 sockets, 5 cores each for 10 cores total, and 50gb ram. Windows 10 can see and use all ram, storage and cpu's. I note this because some other VPS providers present each core as a socket, and Windows 10 will only support up to 2 sockets.

Anyway, hope this may help someone along the way.

Awesome!

How well is Windows running for you on their platform, nice and smooth?

 
Posted : June 9, 2017 3:50 pm
(@edrock200)
Posts: 9
Active Member
Topic starter
 

It works great! it's been rock solid and stable since I did the Windows 10 install. The specs/cost of their VPS are really good too. I use the 1.2GB SSD VPS, with the 10 cores and 50gb of ram it's been running all my apps with cycles to spare. Thanks again for the images/site!

 
Posted : June 16, 2017 5:52 am
(@sysadmin)
Posts: 265
Reputable Member Admin
 
Posted by: edrock200

It works great! it's been rock solid and stable since I did the Windows 10 install. The specs/cost of their VPS are really good too. I use the 1.2GB SSD VPS, with the 10 cores and 50gb of ram it's been running all my apps with cycles to spare. Thanks again for the images/site!

Fantastic news!

Thanks again for sharing!

 
Posted : June 16, 2017 4:34 pm
(@vmmo96)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

 

i am very interested in this method

someone test this method ? is this working ?

 
Posted : July 18, 2017 5:51 am
(@sysadmin)
Posts: 265
Reputable Member Admin
 
Posted by: vmmo96

 

i am very interested in this method

someone test this method ? is this working ?

Unfortunately I haven't had time to test it personally, however it should work as outlined above 🙂

 
Posted : July 18, 2017 5:52 am
bocua
(@bocua)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

Now can i install Windows 10 on Contabo VPS ? 

 
Posted : January 19, 2018 2:34 am
(@sysadmin)
Posts: 265
Reputable Member Admin
 
Posted by: bocua

Now can i install Windows 10 on Contabo VPS ? 

Please see the posts above.

 
Posted : January 19, 2018 2:47 am
(@demoversion)
Posts: 2
New Member
 

Hi, 

"Follow the instructions to get this image installed on your contabo SSD VPS, but change /dev/sdb at the end of the install statement to /dev/sda."
I do not see any instructions, can you post some links?

 
Posted : May 2, 2018 3:43 pm
(@demoversion)
Posts: 2
New Member
 

an you post the link and images?
Unfortunately I do not display anything

 
Posted : May 2, 2018 3:49 pm
(@sysadmin)
Posts: 265
Reputable Member Admin
 
Posted by: demoversion

an you post the link and images?
Unfortunately I do not display anything

We do not have a full guide for Contabo at this time.

 
Posted : May 4, 2018 8:54 pm
(@bernardfruler)
Posts: 3
New Member
 
Posted by: edrock200
 
Look at the VirtIO-SCSI instructions on this site for Windows 7 (at this time, I believe this is the only -scsi image available, others are marked "coming soon.")

Hi, can anyone point at the instructions he is talking about ? Thx!

 
Posted : January 7, 2019 11:55 pm
(@ertatu)
Posts: 2
New Member
 

Please, any detailed tutorial please?

 
Posted : January 9, 2019 12:22 am
(@ertatu)
Posts: 2
New Member
 

Now is aviable WIN10 VirtIO-SCSI

 
Posted : January 9, 2019 12:35 am
(@bernardfruler)
Posts: 3
New Member
 

We should have this valuable template available

 

To anyone out there, I am ready to pay a small fee for someone who creates one Windows 10 Pro template for Contabo SSD VPS. Write me by email : [email protected]

 
Posted : January 9, 2019 2:42 am
(@maintimes)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

Look at the VirtIO-SCSI instructions on this site for Windows 7(Where can I get this)

 
Posted : January 24, 2019 9:23 am
(@bernardfruler)
Posts: 3
New Member
 

https://www.lowendtalk.com/profile/jazz1611

This guy me set it up for me for a small fee

 
Posted : January 24, 2019 11:22 am
(@edrock200)
Posts: 9
Active Member
Topic starter
 

Apologies, I don't frequent this forum much .this very site used to have templates and tutorials for various vps types, which is the instructions I was referring too. I looked for it but it looks like they are behind a paywall now and I don't recall the specific instructions. Sorry I couldn't be of more help .

 
Posted : April 20, 2019 4:46 pm
(@edrock200)
Posts: 9
Active Member
Topic starter
 

Hey all. In case anyone else stumbles upon this, I setup a new Windows 10 System on Contabo using the images here:

https://www.whatuptime.com/downloads/microsoft-windows-templates/

To install, purchase your VPS, go to your contabo control panel, VPS control, click the disk icon under "Rescue System", then chose the "SystemRescueCD64", set a password, and click start rescue system.

 

Use putty to SSH to your VPS's IP address and put in the password you just created to login. You do not need to run any sudo commands. just run:

wget -O- http://mirror.whatuptime.com/Win10-imagepath-VirtIO.gz | gunzip | dd of=/dev/sda

Note "Win10-imagepath-VirtIO.gz" is not the actual image path, and you want the VirtIO-SCSI image. You need to donate to the site to get the actual links and I don't want to post the direct link or violate any rules. Note the change at the end from /dev/sdb to /dev/sda.

Once the image is finished loading, type "reboot". That's it, Windows 10 boots up perfect with all drivers and services functioning perfectly! Contabo also configures your VPS with 2 sockets regardless of the amount of cores, so you will get the full power of your VM with Windows 10 since it supports up to 2 sockets, and any number of cores per socket.

Once Windows loads up, a few notes:

Extend the C drive partition. It loads as a 13GB partition so you will run out of space quickly if you don't extend it to use more of your provisioned drive space.

If you are ok with the Enterprise Edition (this is the only edition I found on this site), nothing left to do other than to create your windows account, add it to the administrators group, reset the administrator password, and disable the WhatUpTime.com account.

If you want to downgrade to Pro, there's several extra steps. I wanted to do this because I couldn't upgrade to the latest version of Windows 10 due to restrictions with Windows 10 Enterprise, and I couldn't activate Enterprise with my spare Windows 10 Pro key. Going to "Activation" and putting in my Pro key also did not work. So I had to do the following:

Open Registry by right clicking start/run, then type "regedit" and click ok.

Expand HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion

Double click "EditionID" and change it to "Professional"

Double click "ProductName" and change it to "Windows 10 Pro"

(Do not include the quotes)

Do the same change for the same keys uner 

HKLM/Software/WOW6432Node/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion

Go here from your VPS:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

Click "Download Tool Now"

Launch the tool. Do NOT click "Upgrade Now." It will fail. Click option to create ISO media and save it.

Now go to wherever it was saved and double click the ISO to mount it.

When the ISO opens, double click setup and follow the prompts to get installed. Note it will keep your files but will wipe any installed apps/settings, so you want to do this process before configuring anything on your VPS.

The good news is Contabo now has a VNC option, so if something goes wrong or setup is sitting at an input prompt on reboot, or you just want to watch the install progress, you can use VNC to get to your VPS and key "consoled" into the system. 

Here's Contabo's VNC instructions:

https://contabo.com/?show=tutorials&tutorial=vnc-connect-vps

Thanks again to this site for providing awesome images and instructions!

-Ed

 
Posted : October 13, 2019 6:39 pm
(@edrock200)
Posts: 9
Active Member
Topic starter
 

Looks like I spoke a little too soon in my last post with regards to downgrading to pro. After the install of pro completes you will need to do a few more things (this is only if you don't stick with Enterprise edition.)

First vnc into the box and re-enable remote desktop. 

Then rdp into your box. 

Grab virtio windows guest tools installer here and install:

https://www.spice-space.org/download/binaries/spice-guest-tools/

That should be it!

 

 
Posted : October 13, 2019 9:45 pm
(@edrock200)
Posts: 9
Active Member
Topic starter
 

Direct link for guest tools:

https://www.spice-space.org/download/windows/spice-guest-tools/spice-guest-tools-latest.exe

 
Posted : October 15, 2019 1:24 am
(@risae)
Posts: 2
New Member
 

I apologize for resurrecting this thread, but i just wanted to say Thank You to edrock200.

With the help of your tutorial i was able to turn my Contabo Linux VPS into a full-flechted Windows 10 Pro VPS.

And also thank you to WhatUpTime for providing these awesome windows templates.

I did have an issue where i couldn't RDP into my server with the WhatUpTime account, but using the "workaround" of giving myself an invite to do Windows Remote Help i was able to get into it and start the installation of Win10 Pro (doing it over VNC is a rather shitty process, especially when your mouse doesn't work properly).

Wish i had known about this before, i was using a way to overpriced Strato Windows Server VPS for many years. Seeing the specs on the Linux machines really makes me wonder why this is not more popular.

 
Posted : May 24, 2020 2:30 pm
(@novae)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

How to install windows 10 to contabo vps https://savepearlharbor.com/?p=294698

 
Posted : May 29, 2020 3:21 am
(@risae)
Posts: 2
New Member
 

@novae

 

I saw that tutorial too, but there are quiete a few more things that you have to do in Linux compared to edrock200 way.

For people who want a quick way to change your Contabo Linux VPS into a Windows VPS i would still recommend edrock200s step by step guide, specially because you don't have to do any resizing of the filesytems in Linux.

 
Posted : May 29, 2020 12:26 pm
(@mew123)
Posts: 1
New Member
 
Posted by: @edrock200

First off, thank you to the authors/contributors of this site who have created the awesome guides and images.

I'm sure there is an easier way to do this, but my searches yielded no results, so I'm posting this in case someone else is trying to this. If there is an easier way, please feel free to trump my post with updated instructions/links.

Contabo appears to use virtio-scsi drivers for their SSD VPS, and I could not find a Win10 image, but did find a way to get it done with the guides here. Here's the high level steps I took:

Look at the VirtIO-SCSI instructions on this site for Windows 7 (at this time, I believe this is the only -scsi image available, others are marked "coming soon.")

Follow the instructions to get this image installed on your contabo SSD VPS, but change /dev/sdb at the end of the install statement to /dev/sda.

Reboot your VPS and login. Note, it will not be happy. Things like Event Viewer and other basic services will fail to load, and the system may even bug check if left on for a few hours, so you'll want to perform the next steps immediately after the image is loaded.

Download and install the latest virtio-scsi drivers (google proxmox virtio drivers, contabo uses proxmox as well.)

Download the Windows 10 image (free) from Microsoft's website. When you launch the downloader, do not tell it to upgrade Win7, tell it to create an iso. Once complete, mount the iso and copy the contents out to your c drive. From that folder you just copied to your C drive, run the setup.exe, which will kick off the windows 10 install. During the install, I chose to "erase everything" with regards to my previous settings/OS. Windows seemed resilient enough to keep the drivers it needed however. It also will ask you for a valid key, so you can register windows properly using this process. Once complete, Windows 10 came up without issue and has been very stable ever since. Even better, Contabo's CPU configuration is 2 sockets. I have the "top" vps package so it's 2 sockets, 5 cores each for 10 cores total, and 50gb ram. Windows 10 can see and use all ram, storage and cpu's. I note this because some other VPS providers present each core as a socket, and Windows 10 will only support up to 2 sockets.

Anyway, hope this may help someone along the way.

I followed this tutorial and it's working ! Thanks !

Just a question : how to clone my installation on an other vVPS on Contabo ?

An other VPS on an other provider ?

 

 
Posted : March 24, 2021 5:37 am
(@edrock200)
Posts: 9
Active Member
Topic starter
 

@mew123

Glad my writeup has been helpful! You have a few options. Easiest would be to boot to rescue and use dd to image off the disk to an ftp or sftp location of your chosing, then do the same in reverse on a new system. If your new systems rescue has direct ssh, you can even dd direct across:

https://www.barryhubbard.com/linux/ghost-hard-drive-to-an-ftp-server/

Or

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thegeekdiary.com/how-to-clone-linux-disk-partition-over-network-using-dd/amp/

You would need to setup an ftp server somewhere or on your home PC to capture the image if using the first link. e.g. https://filezilla-project.org/ The second link would be direct from one vps to another.

This post was modified 3 years ago 2 times by edrock200
 
Posted : March 24, 2021 12:35 pm
(@edrock200)
Posts: 9
Active Member
Topic starter
 

@risae

Glad it worked for you! Not sure why you couldn't rdp. You can always try changing the rdp port if contabo has blocked rdp for some reason. I don't have a vps with them anymore:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/clients/change-listening-port

 
Posted : March 24, 2021 12:38 pm
(@edrock200)
Posts: 9
Active Member
Topic starter
 

@cacoucou Glad it's still helping people out!

 
Posted : September 13, 2021 6:29 pm
 neca
(@neca)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

Hello,

I'm trying to install Windows on Contabo VPS but get this error:

 

- 0%[ ] 0 --.-KB/s dd: writing to '/dev/vda': No space left on device
1+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes copied, 0.419998 s, 0.0 kB/s
- 0%[ ] 61.25K --.-KB/s in 0.1s

Cannot write to ‘-’ (Broken pipe).

 

Does anyone know how to fix it?

Thank you!

 
Posted : October 14, 2023 10:38 pm
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