Recover from a virtio storage driver crash

Use case

This procedure applies to Windows VMs crashing because of an invalid Virtio Storage driver. The boot triggers a BSOD related to viostor.sys.

Solution

Remove the viostor.sys driver manually.

Procedure

1. boot windows in the Startup Repair mode

2. cancel the automatic repair (it will fail anyway)

3. in the final screen, select View advanced options for system recovery and support

4. log in as user ‘ci’

5. select command prompt

6. find the windows directory (it should be available in drive D:) and go to the system32 directory

D:
cd \windows\system32

7. find all occurrences of viostor.sys

dir /s /b viostor.sys

8. remove them

del system32\viostor.sys
del xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxx\viostor.sys
...

9. reboot the VM